Pension Schemes Bill (Eighth sitting)

Luke Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Torsten Bell]

Despite the hon. Member’s kind invitation, and as he well knows, I am not about to start commenting on the Budget—something I have heard him say himself many times over the years in his previous roles.

More seriously, the last 50 years tell us that the question of pension uprating is a big deal and very important. By “uprating”, I mean how pensions keep pace with earnings or prices. Obviously, on the state pension we tend to talk in terms of earnings. It is a big issue. The lesson of the 1980s and 1990s was about rising pensioner poverty at a time when the state pension was not earnings indexed but earnings were growing significantly. That is why we ended up with 30% or 40% pensioner poverty during those years. History tells us that those things are important. History aside, they are also obviously important for individuals, as we heard at the evidence session.

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

I want to add my voice and the calls of my constituents for that issue to be addressed and tackled. I have been contacted by several constituents, one of whom has lost up to 70% of the value of their occupational pension. I add my voice to those calling for the Government to do what they can to address this issue, which I know the Minister recognises is having a huge impact on many people’s lives.

Roger Sainsbury, among others, raised the issue in the evidence session. He said that he had confidence that the Government would come up to the mark and find a way through the perceived difficulties. I seek reassurance from the Minister on behalf of my constituents that the Government will do all they can to ensure that that is the case.

[Torsten Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions. Let me come to the two halves; two different issues are actually being raised in these amendments and I want to make sure that we deal with them separately.

New clause 5 deals with discretionary increases for schemes that have not fallen into the PPF—those with solvent employers. Here, as I said in the surplus discussion, the changes on surplus provide a new route for trustees who do not have the power to make those discretionary increases off their own bat to discuss with employers discretionary increases on pre-1997 pension accruals. It is also clear that we need to understand this issue well. The Pensions Regulator has been engaging in surveys on this issue for exactly that reason and will continue to do so. Overall, my argument is that, for those schemes still operating, we are not going to be in the business of legislating to overwrite scheme rules when it comes to whether schemes had indexation in them pre-1997.

Questions of the PPF and FAS represent an important debate, as we heard last Tuesday—I answered questions about that then, and I will not pain everyone by repeating my answers.

New clauses 18 and 19 would not work. The new clauses as drafted would apply to subsets of the PPF population. Some pensioners would receive indexation, and some would not. The same flaws in the new clauses apply to FAS. We will definitely be opposing the new clauses, but that is without regard to the wider questions, which, as I said, I commented on last Tuesday.