Oral Answers to Questions

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I think my hon. Friend will greatly welcome the youth guarantee announced in the “Get Britain Working” White Paper. We want to ensure that every single young person gets the same chance. We have seen a dreadful increase in the number of NEET young people over the past few years, and we are getting to grips with that and tackling it.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

6. If she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Pensions Regulator on economic growth.

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

The Government are looking across the piece at how the important work of our regulators supports economic growth, and the Pensions Regulator, which oversees the third largest pension system in the world, is no exception to that.

[Lincoln Jopp]

The then pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, said that green-lighting defined benefit pension superfunds was his greatest achievement of lockdown. The unelected Governor of the Bank of England then unhelpfully intervened and said that superfunds would be a risk to financial stability, and as a result the Pensions Regulator has authorised only one pension superfund to come into existence. Can the Minister be a little more specific and tell us what exactly he is going to get the Pensions Regulator to do differently in order to support the growth mission?

[Torsten Bell]

That is an important question. The Pensions Regulator does recognise its important role in supporting growth; indeed, it has statutory duties not just to protect savers but to minimise the impact on the growth of employers. Superfunds have an important role to play in ensuring that we have larger pension funds that are able to invest in a wider range of assets. As the hon. Gentleman says, on an interim basis the Pensions Regulator has authorised one such fund, but we will take measures in the pension schemes Bill to make further progress in this regard.