National Savings & Investments

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Thursday 26th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

My hon. Friend is completely right. I am sure that she speaks for many people today. The experience of administering estates is challenging for us all at the best of times, and it is of deep regret to me—and, I am sure, to everyone at NS&I—that we are putting anybody through complications. I can give her the reassurance that everybody will be paid all moneys due and held by NS&I. We will make every endeavour to reconnect people to their funds. That will include, as I say, directly contacting the representatives of estates, who will have contacted NS&I in the first place to notify it of a death. Were that not to be successful, we would then put in place a chain of contact below it. The details will be set out in the plan in May, but I can give a reassurance that that is already being worked through. We will use the time between now and May to continue to examine the data that NS&I holds—I have said that we are reviewing over 34 million cases—to ensure that we have the absolute best contacts and are able to go as soon as the delivery report plan has been set out.

My hon. Friend rightly raised the question of distress. I can absolutely give her the reassurance that everybody involved understands how they should be handling matters. As I said, for the Treasury’s part, that includes recognising that there will be worries about the implications for some estates of taxes due. I will set out how we intend to address that in May.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for making this statement today, and welcome the appointment of Sir Jim Harra, who did indeed have an excellent record at the head of HMRC, as interim chief executive.

I think we ought also to have a word of praise for the consumer affairs team at The Daily Telegraph, who have drawn welcome attention to unwelcome statistics, such as £116 million in unclaimed premium bond prizes, £3 billion spent on digitisation and £43 million spent on consultants for doing we know not what. Given that the Financial Ombudsman Service can award only token sums by way of compensation for maladministration, can the Minister assure NS&I savers that, when it comes to the question of compensation that must be paid to them by NS&I, there will be some dedicated method whereby those who are already severely out of pocket can have speedy resolution of their claims and recompense?

[Torsten Bell]

Let me try to take the right hon. Member’s questions in turn. I would think of compensation as two buckets. There will be automatic compensation relating to the withholding of funds. The FCA provides guidance on how that should be administered, and we will ensure that is put in place in full. More complicated cases—he has given examples in which the deprivation of funds has had implications—will be considered on a case-by-case basis, rather than by using the FCA formula that I have mentioned.

I am keen to praise journalists where we can, but I am afraid that, in the case of The Daily Telegraph in recent weeks, praise needs to be caveated. It is important to raise cases brought up by members of the public, but some of the reporting I have seen in the past 48 hours has been incredibly inaccurate. I will give the right hon. Gentleman two examples. The Daily Telegraph has published a piece claiming that 160,000 cases relating to NS&I have been brought to the Financial Ombudsman Service, when in truth that number is in the hundreds. That was printed on the front page of the newspaper without basic fact-checking taking place. Today, the paper has talked about taxpayers’ money being used to reunite people with their funds. That is entirely inaccurate for the reasons that I have set out. I worry that that will have worried some MPs and members of the public. It is important that we raise questions of customer service, in which NS&I has fallen short, as I have said, but we should not be blind to what has been inaccurate journalism in the past 48 hours.

Pre-1997 Pensions: Discretionary Increases

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Thursday 19th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I hear the right hon. Member’s point. I am not going to comment on individual legal cases, obviously, but the basis of the distinction at 1997 reflects the decisions taken in 1995 by a previous Conservative Administration to introduce statutory indexation, but not wanting to do that for accruals that had already taken place. The Pensions Act 1995 brought in statutory indexation from 1997 onwards. 

We can recognise the underlying reasons for this situation—not retrospectively changing the basis of scheme rules—while sharing Members’ huge frustrations with it. It is why I continue to encourage trustees and sponsoring employers to think carefully about the effect of inflation on member benefits when making decisions. The Pensions Regulator already sets out that trustees should consider specifically—not just generally—the situation of those members and whether the scheme has a history of making such awards.

Pensions legislation sets minimum legal standards that all schemes must meet, and they are designed to strike the balance between fair and workable, and having a stable DB landscape. I completely recognise the case for change that the right hon. Member for New Forest East has made today and in the past. The challenge is that it would be unreasonable to retrospectively change long-standing rules in blanket terms in a way that would put some schemes’ stability at risk, whether that is today by fundamentally changing their funding position, or in future, when we do not know what the world will look like.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

If the Minister would follow the recommendation of at least giving the trustees the full power to make the decision over discretionary awards and taking it away from the company, one could be pretty sure that if the scheme went into deficit, the trustees would act accordingly.

[Torsten Bell]

I will come in a second to the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, which is about where power lies in the system.

Fuel Duty

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

Our position is to deliver a stable transition. That was the position of the Conservative party. It is the party that introduced the energy profits levy. [Interruption.] I will answer the question. Gas and energy from the North sea will be part of the energy transition in the UK for some decades to come, as several Members have mentioned. That is why the Chancellor met the industry in recent days, and why we are setting out proposals to allow tiebacks that will help us get gas out of the ground in the near future. Longer-term changes will take significantly longer, but none of what I have heard from Conservative Members is an excuse for rejecting the tens of billions of pounds of renewable energy investment that is important for delivering domestic energy security for this country.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I like the Minister very much, not least because he represents the Welsh seat of my birth and upbringing, and because I have such respect for him, I am going to try to make the point to him that I have so far made with zero success to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, among others. It is all well and good to talk about the greatest increase in spending on defence since the end of the cold war if we are comparing the post cold war period with what is—shall we say?—a quiet defence period, but we are not. What we need to spend now is not to be compared with what it was like after the end of the cold war, but what it was like during the cold war, and during the cold war we regularly spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. If he recognises that there is some merit in that argument, could he try to persuade his colleagues to stop making that false comparison?

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the right hon. Member for his kind remarks, even if they were driven by geography rather than personality. I will take what I can get in today’s debate! Since we are being kind to each other, I recognise the point he makes about the significant uncertainty we face in this world today. That uncertainty always existed to a significant extent, if we are honest, and I think most Conservative Members realise that defence cuts year after year in the last decade were a mistake—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

indicated assent.

[Torsten Bell]

The right hon. Member is nodding. So I would offer that by way of comparison.

Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Report stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

My hon. Friend has discussed this challenge with me many times and is a powerful campaigner for his affected constituents. I give him absolutely that assurance, and I extend to him the same offer I have given to other hon. Friends: I will be happy to meet him and affected constituents, or trustees who have been affected by this issue.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister has indeed been most accessible, and I am extremely grateful to him for the meeting he held with members of the ExxonMobil pensioners group. I am still being lobbied very hard by ExxonMobil pensioners who are concerned that whereas changes introduced in the Budget will benefit members of the FAS and PPF schemes, private defined-benefit scheme members will not benefit. He knows far more about the subject than I do, but can he not see that there is a feeling that they are being discriminated against? Is there nothing he can offer to make them feel somewhat more included in the beneficial steps being taken for members of other schemes?

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that and for our conversations on this matter in recent months. Although I think it is completely reasonable that people would feel like that—so would many of us if we had seen the high inflation of recent years eat into our non-index-linked pension payments—let me explain the consistency of the Government’s position. We are providing pre-’97 indexation on compensation relating to pensions now held within the PPF to those who were in schemes that did provide for indexation. There is no question of retrospectively changing the entitlement within the schemes; we are simply requiring that the compensation within the PPF and the FAS recognises that the schemes that people were in did previously recognise the need for indexation.

Other schemes within PPF and outside the PPF, including the one that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, did not provide for indexation in their scheme rules. He is right to say that, on those matters, the changes that I have outlined today on the PPF do not provide relief. I have gone on to say that because of the changes we are bringing forward in the surplus rules, I think the trustees—as was discussed with some of his trustees—do have more ability and more leverage with which to ask for those discretionary increases, but I completely appreciate that that is different in form from the compensation indexation that we are providing within the PPF.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The problem, as the Minister knows from our meeting, is that the trustees are rather hemmed in by not having the leverage or the freedom to act if the company itself—particularly if it is headquartered abroad—is disinclined to pass on any surpluses that it might have available.

[Torsten Bell]

I recognise the right hon. Member’s point. I think the level of pessimism may be overstated. My view is that our changes on surplus, which put trustees clearly in the driving seat, provide for more ability for trustees to seek to change that balance of power within their relationship. I do not want to prejudge the individual discussions between all trustees and their employers—those will be different in different circumstances—but trustees are in a stronger position given the changes on surplus release that we are introducing through this Bill. But I am not pretending for a second that that solves overnight the points that the right hon. Member is making.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Despite his new role in riding to the rescue of the Treasury, is the Pensions Minister still available to fulfil in principle the undertaking he gave me before the recess to have a meeting about the plight of ExxonMobil pensioners and the difficulties in them getting the discretionary surplus benefits to which I think they should be entitled?

[Torsten Bell]

Absolutely.

Pension Schemes Bill

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

2nd reading
Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for taking my intervention and for the very helpful letter he sent me on 30 June about schemes of this sort, and in particular the ExxonMobil pension scheme. His letter encouragingly states:

“Following our reforms, trustees will continue to consider the correct balance of interest between members and the sponsoring employer when making decisions about the release of surplus funds. Trustees will be responsible for determining how members may benefit from any release of surplus…and have a suite of options to choose from—for example, through discretionary benefit increases.”

The trouble is that these pensioners have received a letter from the trustees of the ExxonMobil pension fund stating:

“The power to award discretionary increases is held by Esso Petroleum Company Limited (the “Company”). Whether or not any discretionary increase is provided is for the Company to determine: the Trustee has no power to award discretionary increases itself.”

This may be a loophole that the Minister needs to address. If the trustees cannot award the surplus as benefits and the company says no, that is not going to benefit my constituents.

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the right hon. Member for raising that specific case. I will look at it in more detail for him as he has kindly raised it here, but he has raised a point that will have more general application, which is that lots of different schemes, particularly DB schemes, will have a wide range of scheme rules. He has raised one of those, which is about discretionary increases. One thing that is consistent across all the schemes, with the legislation we are bringing in today, is that trustees must agree for any surplus to be released. It may be the case that the employer, in the details of those scheme rules, is required to agree to a discretionary increase, but the trustees are perfectly within their rights to request that that is part of an agreement that leads to a surplus release.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

What if it is the other way round?

[Torsten Bell]

In any circumstances, the trustees would need to agree to a surplus release, so they are welcome to say to their employer: we are only going to agree to it on the basis of a change to something that the employer holds the cards over. I am happy to discuss that with the right hon. Member further, and there may be other schemes that are in a similar situation.

Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Gentleman is welcome to choose his tone; I will continue to the end of my comments. My job is to come and explain the Government’s decision, and to be held accountable for it. That is what I am doing today, and what I will continue to do over the course of my remarks. It is right that the Government are then asked questions about their decision; that is the nature of this democracy, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire said.

An important consideration in the Government making this decision was that evidence showed that sending people unsolicited letters is unlikely to affect what they know. That is why letters are sent only as part of wider communication campaigns. This evidence was not properly considered by the ombudsman. Another consideration was that the great majority of 1950s-born women were aware of the state pension age changing, if not of a change in their specific state pension age, as several hon. Members have pointed out. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford mentioned the statistic of 43%, referring to the 2024 rather than 2023 survey. However, as she will know, that refers to all women, including some women as young as 16; if we look at the cohort of women born in the 1950s, the figure is far, far higher. On those and other grounds, we rejected the ombudsman’s approach to injustice and remedy.

Members will be aware that litigation is live, so I will not go into lots more detail on the research evidence, which is the core of that litigation. I will just say two things: first, our decision was based on published research reports, which were robust and met professional standards; secondly, the same awareness research, which the right hon. Member for New Forest East disparaged, was used by the ombudsman.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will the Minister explain to the House why not one single speech in this debate until his has taken the line that he is taking? Everyone who has spoken in this debate believes that some compensation, at least symbolically, should be paid.

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. I am a liberal man. People will come to different views on the evidence. There are many Members in the House who have campaigned powerfully on this issue over many years, and I respect the work they have done on that. I am setting out a different view from the one that the right hon. Member has taken. That is the nature of policy choice, the nature of accountability, and the nature of this debate.

The ombudsman is clear that redress and compensation should normally reflect individual impact, as it did in the case of the Equitable Life compensation scheme that an hon. Member mentioned. And they spell out the challenges of assessing the individual circumstances of 3.5 million women, not least given that it took the ombudsman nearly six years to look at just six cases. The reality is that assessing them would take thousands of staff very many years. We gave detailed thought to whether we could design a fair and feasible compensation scheme. However, most of the schemes that were suggested would not focus on women who lost opportunities as a result of the delay in sending letters. Rule-based schemes, such as that suggested by the Work and Pensions Committee, would make payments on the basis of the likes of age rather than injustice. Simply playing a flat rate to all 3.5 million women born in the 1950s, irrespective of any injustice, is also hard to justify.

Fundamentally, though, our decision was not only driven by cost—to answer directly the question of the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank)—but by the fact that we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or remedy for the reasons that I have set out. Indeed, our commitment to pensioners can be seen in the significant fiscal investments that we are making in our priorities for pensioners, including raising the state pension and rescuing the NHS.

Mansion House Accord

Debate between Torsten Bell and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for Leeds and for Britain every single week in this Chamber, and everything she said is completely right. The job of the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank is to work with our nations and regions to ensure that projects can be de-risked and supported and that a wide range of private investors can come in behind that and make sure change actually happens, so that this becomes a country that invests in its future once again.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

At a time when we have been commemorating a significant anniversary of VE Day, does the Minister share my concern that certain large pension firms are refusing to invest in profitable defence industries on spurious ethical grounds? Is that something that his pensions investment review might care to investigate?

[Torsten Bell]

I hear the point the right hon. Gentleman raises, and we have had those debates in this Chamber in recent months. The UK Government are doing what they need to do to invest in our security and defence and to support our defence industry more generally. We have made it very clear that private investment in those sectors is the right thing to do for our national security and our national economic growth. So far today, there have been calls for mandation and calls to oppose any mandation. There are choices available within pension funds for savers. The vast majority of funds—I think it is 99% within the National Employment Savings Trust, for example—invest in the broad defaults and do invest in the likes of defence companies.