Pension Fund Reliefs

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her question. I absolutely agree; there is international and industry consensus that scale and consolidation are beneficial to pension funds, driving economies of scale and efficiencies that can be passed back to savers and unlocking productive investment. That is what the Mansion House reforms seek to do. My noble friend talked about the ability of pension funds to invest in productive assets. That is what the infrastructure strategy and the industrial strategy are designed to do. I hope we will see more announcements along those lines at the time of the spending review.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I hear what the Minister says, but what steps are the Government taking to increase the supply of domestic infrastructure projects and other long-term investments in the UK economy that would meet the needs of pension funds’ trustees and investors? I hear from trustees that they would quite like to do some of this stuff but sometimes struggle to find suitable projects in which to invest. Are we not going backwards, with listed investment companies being killed off?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The answer to the last part of the noble Lord’s question is no. However, I very much agree with the analysis he set out in the rest of his question. Ensuring that there are investment opportunities for these assets to be invested in is a key part of our strategy, which is why we are producing the infrastructure strategy at the time of the spending review. I hope it will answer a lot of the noble Lord’s questions when it comes out.