Pensions Commission

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I can indeed, and I am grateful to my noble friend for his welcome back. He will forgive me, as I will not be able to give him any specific answers on the future rates of the state pension; if I pre-empt the Budget, I think I may be the shortest-living Minister in history—I would not even make it to 24 hours. But I can tell him how the process will work. The Government are required to do a review of the state pension age. We have set up an independent commission, chaired by Dr Suzy Morrissey, to look at the evidence and make a report, which it has now done and handed it in. The Government will take a wider range of evidence, including from the Pensions Commission, and will then have to make a decision about the future of the state pension age. The commission is looking at the adequacy of the state pension. Obviously, the state pension is there, but the key objective is determining whether people are saving enough for retirement—so it is not just about what the state pension is doing but about whether people are saving enough in private pensions for retirement, and it is clear from the interim report that they are not. We now look forward to the recommendations that are coming. All of us will come together and the Government will make a decision. This is all on the back of the significant work done already by the pensions investment commission and the recent Bill on private pension schemes. It is all coming together.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that the Minister is still there on the Front Bench; may it continue. My question is on which comes first. We discussed the then Pension Schemes Bill at length—a very complicated Bill—various other pension things have come before the House; and now we have a commission. Surely, it is putting the cart before the horse by us all doing lots of legislation and then having a commission to see what should be in it. Surely, the commission should have come first.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I now realise that I did a terrible job, because repeatedly during the passage of the Pension Schemes Act I tried to explain why that was not right, and I utterly failed—I will have one last go. The Government set out a pensions investment review to look at the state of the landscape of private pension saving. We then recognised that, if we want people to save more for their retirement in private pensions, we need to make sure that they will get the returns they need. The Pension Schemes Act is now laying the ground to make sure that private pension savers are getting the returns, so that if the Pensions Commission looks at it and decides there needs to be more private pension saving, the people who make those savings will get the return on that hard-earned money. It does all come together. I know the noble Lord was not able to be there, but I did a briefing yesterday, open to all Peers, on what is happening in the pensions area, and we set out a road map showing how all these things come together; I would be very happy to send him a copy of that.