Pension Schemes Bill

Baroness White of Tufnell Park Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 18th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness White of Tufnell Park (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

I rise to address your Lordships’ House for the first time. I want to start by saying a little bit about myself. I am a child of the Windrush generation. My mother came from Jamaica to London aged 19. In fact, my grandfather sold a field to fund her passage. My father arrived as a 26 year-old and they met and married here in London. I spent most of my childhood in Leyton, east London, and it was something of a dilemma whether to take the name of the place I grew up or the name of the place that I have chosen to live with my husband and two boys, Tufnell Park. Noble Lords will see that I chose the latter.

At a time when the national discourse is so full of division, I hope that the successful integration of the West Indian community into the UK serves as a reminder of those close, common bonds that tie together so many communities, many from the previous British Empire. Thanks to this country, I was able to get a free education at Cambridge and then in London—an education my parents did not get. My mother left school as a 10 year-old and my father as a 15 year-old. It has enabled me to enjoy what is charitably described as a rather eclectic career between the public and the private sectors. I have a rather wide range of interests across public policy, economics and business and I hope your Lordships will be tolerant of those over the coming years.

I am both humbled and privileged to be making my maiden speech as part of the Pension Schemes Bill debate. For me, pensions are both personal as well as professional. They are personal as I creep ever closer to pension age myself, but also because I am scarred by my father’s experience. Probably the single worst financial decision he made was leaving the British Rail defined benefit pension scheme and joining the little-known SERPS many years into his working career.

It is professional because, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, mentioned, I have spent quite a lot of my career working on pensions. I was trying to remember the first time, which was the Goode report in the aftermath of the Maxwell pension scandal. The equalisation of the state pension age was when I was at the Treasury. The reform of SERPS was when I was at No. 10, and I am currently advising one of the big Canadian pension schemes.

As we have heard already in the debate, the country desperately needs to increase its productivity and growth. It is the only way, sustainably, to raise living standards in this country across communities—living standards which, extraordinarily, have not budged in real terms since the great financial crisis of 2008. As is well known, we lose too many companies to the US, where growth capital is more plentiful. Again as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has already said, this is no accident. It is rooted in past regulation, which was well intentioned and aimed to de-risk defined benefit schemes. But it has had the result, as we have heard, of dramatically reducing the proportion of pension assets going into UK equities, from around 50% to, broadly speaking, 5% today.

Plans put forward by this Government and championed by the former Government to require UK pension funds to invest more of their funds in the domestic economy and within domestic businesses are, in my view, a positive and important step. We have heard already that several UK funds have voluntarily made commitments through the so-called Mansion House Accord, and it is welcome that the Bill provides a legislative backstop to ensure that what is promised is actually delivered. I note the controversy that this particular set of legislative recommendations has raised already in the House, and I look forward to being part of the debate in the future.

In a similar vein, the consolidation of the myriad diffuse local government schemes should improve efficiency—efficiency not just for its own sake but to release more funds to invest in the UK. However, the move falls short of the creation of the sort of mega funds in Australia and Canada that have driven a more wholesale move of public sector pensions into private funds.

I thank your Lordships. Joining the House is one of the privileges of my life, and I look forward, over the coming months, to listening, learning and, over time, contributing in some small way. Like others today, I take a moment to thank the many Members of the House of Lords and its staff. I am spatially dyspraxic, so finding my way around over the last few months has not been without its challenges, and the team has been incredibly kind, patient and generous. I thank them.