Pension Schemes Bill

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment, which was so well introduced by my noble friend Lord Younger and so well spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. The Bill is very complicated. It is not absolutely clear to me what it means. It is also, as my noble friend Lord Younger explained, a skeletal Bill without a clear purpose to improve the outcomes for savers. In particular, looking at the value-for-money part of the Bill, it is not clear how this is going to work, what the metrics will be and how they will be assessed.

I think it is right to table this amendment in order to understand the purpose of the Bill. I am not clear that the Bill is primarily intended to improve the outcomes for pensioners or to find ways to fund government initiatives to make certain investments with pension savings that the trustees and managers might not have decided to make, which may require them to compromise on what should be their complete and clear duty to exercise their fiduciary responsibilities.

Can the Minister tell the Committee how the Bill is certain to improve outcomes for pensioners beyond what they would have been without government interference in the management of these funds? The Bill interferes with the trustees’ fiduciary duties not only with the mandation powers to direct investments, which apply only to very large DC schemes—the kind to which less well-off pensioners have contributed—but with the powers to require the 93 local government pension schemes to pool their funds together. How is this going to work if, at the same time, the Government are forcing many local authorities to merge or demerge under local government reorganisation?

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and approach to this amendment.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank everyone for their contributions. I do not intend to go on at length.

It is a novel view, is it not, that a Bill should have a purpose? This ought to be applied to many other Bills to show what their purposes are. This Bill has a wide range of powers affecting consolidation, investment, surplus extraction, defaults and retirement outcomes, but nowhere is a clear statement of purpose listed. I do not think that is symbolic; it is very useful. I have a simple question for the Minister: what is lost by clarity? We are looking here for a piece of clarity that does not undermine the Bill in any way but sets out what people are meant to see and expect from the Bill. It would set a pathway for other Bills to set out their purposes. From these Benches, I support this amendment.