Pension Schemes Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

My wider question to the Minister is this: if the Government take this reserve power, how can she expect anyone or any group of people in future to enter into voluntary agreements designed to be supportive of government policy if, subsequently and unexpectedly, the Government can unilaterally render such voluntary commitments mandatory, with all the angst, uncertainties and disputes that that will likely entail?

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it is utterly ridiculous that only 5% of UK pension funds are invested in the UK. The figure was 50% when I was a pension fund manager. The difference is entirely down to us as politicians. The solution is not to compel financial managers to do things; it is to understand what we did to make this happen and undo at least some of it. If the Government want quick access to priorities, they should turn to the members. The members believe in this country. Their interest is in it being a prosperous country, with lots of investment coming into it. Give them more influence over what pension funds do. They should not go for this government mandation; it is a dead end and, at its heart, poisonous.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their comments. Having spoken at some length at the start, I will not respond at length. I shall just pick up a few points.

On the question on fiduciary duty, nothing in the Bill disapplies trustees’ existing duties of loyalty, prudence and acting in members’ best interests. Those continue to apply in full. Were this power ever to be used—I repeat, the Government do not expect to use it—and the asset allocation requirements were in place, the savers’ interest test allows a scheme to seek an exemption if it can show that compliance would cause material financial detriment to members. Not only would they be enabled to do that but we would expect the fiduciary duty to require the trustees to make such an application to the regulator. Trustees are not directed to invest in any specific asset or project, and if they believe that the requirements are not in the members’ best interests, again, they should apply for an exemption.

The neutrality amendments provide a meaningful constraint. The Government must prescribe qualifying asset descriptions across each of the private market categories in the Bill, so they could not load an entire requirement into a single asset class, let alone a pet project or specific investment. Any future Government who attempted to define qualifying assets in a way designed to serve their own policies or a pet project, rather than savers’ interests, would clearly be vulnerable to legal challenge on rationality grounds.

I am not going to debate this at length since the noble Lords have made clear their intention to test the opinion of the House irrespective of whatever I say. I have just two other comments, on scale. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, that the Government should be pragmatic. I completely agree. My problem with her amendment is that it is not practical, so I cannot be pragmatic in trying to apply an amendment that is really clear in the matter of scale but would simply be too difficult to apply, because it is not clear what the nature of the test would be and it would end up getting bogged down in the courts for years, giving the regulator an impossible job. That simply does not work.

I have made the point about competition in our previous, long debate, and I do not doubt we will return to it again should the Bill not all disappear tonight. In the light of that, I hope that noble Lords feel able not to press their amendments.