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Q I have one final question, if I may. You run a pool of 11 funds. This is taking 87 into six. Everybody seems to think that is a good idea. Are you included in the “everybody”? Rachel Elwell: I do think there is a fantastic opportunity for us to harness the benefits of scale that come from being one of the top 10 globally by size, but it is important, as we do that, that we maintain the link to local people who are the members of this.
Q This is tricky, though, is it not? Because there is no geographical definition of those six pools, Cornwall could, as I mentioned earlier, find itself investing in Leeds. That would be lovely for you in Leeds, but it would not be so great for people down in Penzance. Rachel Elwell: Border to Coast, if we do have those 18, will stretch from the Scottish border to the southern coast. Even today, we have partner funds who are right across England, which is brilliant because those are people who have actively chosen to come together, form a partnership and work together. Time permitting, if it is of interest to the Committee, we could talk a bit more about local investment and the way of getting investment that is truly local for each individual fund but also a way of crowding investment from other people into the slightly larger opportunities that might be in a region. Every investment we make is local—it impacts local people. You do not need to only have, for example, Durham council investing in Durham. You want all of the LGPS and all asset owners to feel that they can do that. Some of the ways that we are working through doing local investment with our partner funds have really got an eye to the different ways in which you can crowd in versus something very specific that needs to be addressed in the region or locality.
Q Minister, thank you for coming to give evidence—we have a long few weeks together. I will start with the evidence we heard from the Deprived Pensioners Association and the Pensions Action Group. I was rather surprised to hear that a fund that had been put aside, worth £14 billion, has now been taken into the Government’s balance sheet, when in fact that money is there to pay for the exact issues that were raised by those two witnesses. However, we suddenly find that the money is being used to fill in a £50 billion black hole—discuss. Torsten Bell: No, obviously. The change that you are referring to is a 2019 change under the last Government. It was taken not by the last Government but by the Office for National Statistics, and it refers not just to the PPF but to funded public sector pension schemes. The same issues apply to the LGPS in the same way. It is a 2019 change made by the statistics body following international guidance on accounting. The changes you are talking about have affected public sector borrowing since then.
Q Yes, but there is a serious issue here, which is that you are now the Minister for Pensions and in a position to be able to do something about this. We can look back on the last 14 years and have that conversation—let us get that out of the way—but here is your opportunity to resolve this problem. Torsten Bell: In stark contrast to lots of my predecessors, I have to say, I have spent a lot of time meeting members of both the PPF and the FAS who have been affected by the issue of pre-1997 accruals. If I am honest, the issue has been a real one since then, but it is a significantly bigger one because of the recent phase of high inflation, which made the pace of inflation eating into the real value of those pensions significantly faster. As I said on Second Reading—this was raised then by a number of colleagues on the Committee—we are considering the issue, but it needs to be considered in the round because of the wider public finance implications. That applies to other issues in this space as well; you will have seen that in other pension schemes where the Government have a role.
Q When you talk about the wider public finance implications, I completely get it; we understand that there is a lot of debt and all the rest of it. The bit I am struggling with is that this is a fund that is set aside for exactly this type of thing. It worries me—and I hope it worries other colleagues on the Committee—that a fund that had been earmarked for specifically this type of thing is now being earmarked for something else. Torsten Bell: To be clear, that is just wrong—it is not. The 2004 Act is very clear about the purposes for which the board’s assets can be used, and there is no question about that. The Office for National Statistics does not get to countermand Acts of Parliament on the use of resources—the 2004 Act is very clear on that. It is nothing to do with that. If you look at the public sector finances in the round, there are all kinds of different forms of funds that are classified in different ways. The classification within the public finances is not determining the use to which funds can be put. The same applies to whether things are classified as taxes or not. They do their job, and obviously those classifications exist for an important reason, which is that we need to have clarity about the public finances. We use those for discipline in terms of making sure that Government objectives in fiscal policy have metrics that they can be tied to. It is totally reasonable for different parties to take different positions on what those metrics should be. There have been different choices made on that by lots of different parties in recent years, but I think everybody in this room probably accepts that you need to have those metrics. When you accept that, you will be in a situation where classifications by the Office for National Statistics impact on those.
Q I move on to value for money, something which, in the broadest sense, everybody seems to agree is a good thing, but I want to pick up on a couple of points. In the evidence given to us by Michelle Ostermann, she made the very interesting point that one problem we have in the UK is that we have not derisked our pension industry. People are still worried about the risks of the pension industry. But she did make the point, which I am sure you will agree with, that you can leverage growth of the economy through leveraging pension fund investment. I think that is something that we both agree with. It goes with the grain of the Bill, and we both want to do that. We heard some interesting evidence from Phoenix, who referred to clause 15 and the consequences of an intermediate performance rating. While we are going to have big arguments about mandation—that is something we fundamentally disagree on—one thing I hope we can both agree on, as we progress this, is that certain elements of the Bill could have unintended consequences. It seems that this one, the intermediate rating, could have the effect of maintaining the derisking of pension funds, because you are trying to avoid getting an intermediate rating and therefore you will avoid doing the slightly more progressed growth. Sorry; I am being incredibly inarticulate after rather a long day, but you know the point I am trying to make. Torsten Bell: I definitely get the point you are making. Let me say one thing about the big picture, and then I will talk about the specifics you raise with the intermediate rating. On the big picture, I absolutely agree that one thing we have done badly in the last 30 years is to think about how changes we make to our pension system, which exists to provide income in retirement for the vast majority of the population, also underpin our capitalism. That is a lesson we have learned painfully. On the substance of risk reduction, I would put it slightly differently, because you have different things going on in the DB and DC landscapes. In the DC landscape, we have been building up a new system. Understandably, because it was starting from small scale, we did not jump to trying to solve all the problems that came with that system, not least getting it to scale, not least what happens in retirement, and not least small pots and the rest. I see this Bill as doing that—taking the next step forward and saying, “Right, we are building this new system. We made big progress in the last 15 years with that, but now is the time to put the change in place.” On scale and on value for money, that will support the wider range of investments more broadly, not just in the UK, but with a wider range of assets. That is absolutely the right thing, in savers’ interests, to do. I also completely endorse your point on unintended consequences, and that is exactly why scrutiny of the Bill is important to make sure that we pick those up as we go. The last 40 years, not just in this country but in others, shows that that can be the case, for good and ill. Specifically on your point about the intermediate rating, we are very much aware of the issue. We are not aiming to replicate a hard metric: “fall one side of this line, and suddenly you are de-authorised from taking auto-enrolment contributions”. That is exactly what we need to avoid, which is what we will be doing. There is a reason behind the provision for more than one level of intermediate ranking, and my view would be that you would not expect people who fall into some of those levels being banned from taking further contributions. It is absolutely right that you do not want an absolute binary—just one metric, one division. The consultations that the FCA and TPR have taken forward are all about making sure that we have worked all those issues through. There are lessons, for example, from what happened in Australia.
Q I have one very last question, if I may, going back to the mandation piece and the evidence that we heard from Helen Forrest Hall. The mandation piece is a reserved power, with a sunset clause in, I think, 2035. I have discussed with another member of this Committee how that reserved power will encourage pension funds to take action and potentially invest more into the UK, which is a good thing—we all agree with that. However, interestingly, Helen Forrest Hall made the point that because there are potentially 10 years in which this could happen, it may cause a reluctance to do the right thing. Actually, the right thing could be to invest in other countries. If we are having a fundamental problem here and there is growth in the economies of, say, the Asia-Pacific rim, the right thing might be to invest there. Investing there might support British businesses, by the way, although it would not necessarily benefit the UK economy. There could be perverse outcomes in investment management behaviour because that reserve power is something in reserve, even if it is never used. Have you thought that through? Torsten Bell: I understand the point you are making. I think you have to step back to the big picture, which is a consensus right across the industry that savers’ interests would be better served by change. It does not make sense that the UK industry is a complete outlier compared with other pensions systems around the world when it comes to exposure to wider ranges of assets. What comes with that exposure to a wider range of assets? The nature of assets, where you are likely to see a larger home bias in that more of them would be in the UK. There is a wider point: is there a good reason why the UK DC pension landscape has a particularly large exposure to equities rather than to a wider range of assets that we see around the rest of the world? No. That is why you have seen the Mansion House accord coming forward—because it is in savers’ interests to change how we are operating. The scale and value-for-money measures, and a lot of the other approaches that we are taking, will facilitate that, but the industry is saying that that is in savers’ interests, and it is right to do so. Ultimately, we have to step back and say that we are not in the business of just making individual random decisions about the pensions system. The question is: what is there a consensus on about the world we need to move to that has a better equilibrium? One of the strong elements of that, along with larger scale, is investing in a wider range of assets because that is in savers’ interests. That is why there is a voluntary Mansion House accord, setting that out as the objective, with relatively low levels of target, particularly on domestic investment, compared with what we see in other countries. That is what is going on. What we are saying is that when you speak to the industry, particularly in private, it is very clear that there is a risk of a collective action problem. Under previous Conservative Chancellors, it signed up to commitments that it has not been delivering. Why has it not been delivering? Because of the collective action problem—the risk of being undercut by somebody else who is not making that change because of the nature of a market that is too focused on cost and not focused enough on returns. I make only one vaguely political point. It is easy to join people in being anxious, but we have to ask ourselves something. There is a reason why the first Mansion House compact was not delivered. Do we want to be here in 15 years saying, “Actually, we all signed up to it and said it needed to happen, but it hasn’t”? No—I am not prepared to do that. Change is going to come. Everybody says that change needs to come because it is in members’ interests. All the reserve power does is to say that it is going to happen.
Q Thank you very much for coming to give evidence. It can be a little intimidating, even for us, to see so many Government Back Benchers sitting across the table. I will start with the most controversial point: the mandation of local government pension schemes when it comes to amalgamation and being forced to go into assets. There are two parts to my question. First, is it fundamentally right to entrust trustees with looking after the interests of the members of pension schemes and then, separately, to tell them how they should be investing that money? Secondly, are there any guardrails to protect pension fund members from being forced to invest in unwise investments? Zoe Alexander: We are concerned about the precedent set by the reserve power in the Bill. We realise that it might not be used, and we hope that that will be the case. We hope that the work the industry has done to create the Mansion House accord and get DC schemes on track to invest more in the UK will fulfil its promise. The presence of the power creates a series of risks, and certainly enacting it would create a series of risks for savers in terms of its impact on investments, on price and, ultimately, on the value that is accrued to savers in the market. We are looking for more guardrails on the power. We would like it to be constrained to apply specifically to the commitments in the Mansion House accord, and no more than that. We think that is appropriate, because the market and the Government have together set out what “good” looks like. If we agree on that, let us put that in the Bill and make it clear that that is the extent of the power. We would also like the sunset clause on the power to be brought forward from 2035 to 2032. That would give more than enough time for the industry to deliver on the commitments in the Mansion House accord, and for the Government to assess progress and whether the power is required. We feel that keeping it on the statute book until 2035 would introduce undue political risk.
Q To summarise, you are saying that the general direction of the policy, which is to get more investment into the UK and therefore more infrastructure, is not in itself a bad thing. Zoe Alexander: We absolutely support the general direction of the policy. Our members are very committed to investing more in the UK and they are doing a huge amount of work on that. They have already invested heavily in the UK, with huge investments from schemes such as the local government pension scheme. On the DC side, schemes are maturing; they need time to get to the scale of investment of schemes such as the LGPS, but they are on the journey and they are committed to doing that. We do not take this position because we do not agree that schemes should be investing more in the UK; it is to do with trustee discretion to make the decisions about where to invest.
Q Ironically, I met some annuity providers who are enthusiastic to invest in equities, but they told me that they are being prevented from doing so. For example, an investment in the equity of a wind farm is a very good asset, because there are predictable returns from it, contracts for difference in the price, and all the rest of it, but they are not allowed to invest in that because they are not allowed to invest into equities. Do you think there are better ways the Government can achieve its aims—that mandation is a bad way of achieving it, but that there are other, better ways that are being missed out in the Bill? Rob Yuille: Yes, there are better ways. The specific point that you mentioned about prudential regulation rules are not for this Bill, but other measures that could be taken, essentially to make the UK an attractive place to invest, are the kind of things that the Government are trying to do. Along with the Mansion House accord, which we were delighted to take forward with Pensions UK and the City of London Corporation, we agree with the Government’s assessment that use of the reserve power should not be necessary and will not be necessary. Firms are already investing in the UK. The Pensions Policy Institute’s latest statistics show that 23% of DC assets are in the UK, and annuity providers say that it is around two thirds, so we are talking about hundreds of billions of pounds in the UK. There is the appetite to invest in the home market, because they know it best, in the kind of projects that the Government are trying to drive forward and provide policy certainty about. We share the concern about the precedent it sets and the potential impact on scheme members, and we would propose another guardrail. There is already provision for a review, were this power to be used, of the impact on scheme members, which is right, and the impact on the economy, which is also fair enough, but they should also look at the impact on the pensions market and the market for the assets that would be mandated, because there is a risk that it would bid up prices in those assets, and that it would create a bubble in them. There are guardrails, but more important, there are other measures, including things that the Government are already doing, that make this power unnecessary.
Q I have one final question. The key point, from the point of view of your members and the local government pension scheme, is that the interest of the members should not be trumped by the interest of the wider economy—their interest comes first. Is that right? Zoe Alexander: That is right, but often those things are consistent, and our members would agree with that. Those things are not inconsistent. Rob Yuille: I agree.
Q Thank you very much for coming to give evidence. Can I get straight into a detailed question regarding the repayment of surpluses, starting with the local government pension scheme? I am advised that regulations 64 and 64A of the Local Government Pension Scheme Regulations 2013 currently allow for surpluses to be paid out of local government pension schemes, but the problem is that actuaries and trustees get nervous when a local government pension scheme is in surplus and are reluctant to allow the surplus to be paid. The provisions of the Bill therefore try to address something that has already been addressed, but they are not tackling the right problem. Patrick Coyne: I think that question is more relevant to me. The reforms across the Bill could be good for savers, but they could also be good for the UK economy. What you are pointing to is a wider, systemic issue in the marketplace, where we have a patchwork quilt of regulation that has built up because the pension system is idiosyncratic, and in some cases 70 years old. The Bill is trying to give trustees the tools for the job. On surplus release, it is trying to give them a statutory override, to look across the piece and say, “When I am a well-run, well-funded pension scheme, is it right that I can extract surplus if it is safe to do so?” We think that is a really important principle.
Q I agree that is an important principle, but if you are a trustee, you are potentially personally liable for any deficits, and you could get yourself in trouble. I will come on to the defined benefit pension schemes in a minute, in relation to the same point. At the end of the day, if you have an actuary who is advising you, “It is fantastic that we are in surplus now, but markets change, we could have a stock market crash and we could be in deficit next week,” you may be more cautious than the Bill would perhaps like to encourage you to be. Do you think that is a fair criticism? Patrick Coyne: Another important part of the Bill is making sure that we get implementation right. There will be a period now when we can consult, and all of us—Government, industry and the regulators—have a role to play to make sure that that happens. I would say that the Bill will actually prompt a discussion that might not have been had by many trustee boards over the last few years. If you look at the amount of surplus that has been released in recent years, it is in the tens of millions, not the billions. We now estimate that three quarters of schemes are in surplus on a low-dependency basis, which is an actuarial calculation of self-sufficiency. That means there could be up to £130 billion across the market. We think it is right that well-funded, well-governed schemes can consider releasing that surplus, if it is in the interest of members to do so.
Q Would you be happy if the full £130 billion was released, and therefore these pension funds were right down to the wire, even if they are still technically in surplus? Patrick Coyne: I think it is highly unlikely that that scenario would happen. Our engagement with the marketplace tends to show that firms considering a different endgame option, which might include running on and releasing surplus, tend to be doing so on a basis where they have hedged their assets, so that they can manage economic volatility, and they are using growth assets above that limit to consider surplus release.
Q I will turn to DB pension schemes—where you have a sponsor company. For example, I have heard the British Telecom pension scheme described as a pension scheme with a telephone provider attached to it. One of the criticisms I have heard is that, because of the rules that were brought in as a result of Maxwell raiding the pension schemes many years ago, DB pension funds are reluctant to invest in equities, because they could end up going into deficit reasonably quickly. One of the intentions with the Bill is to get funds investing more in equities, but there are still elements left behind encouraging behaviour that does not follow the grain of the Bill. Those particular rules—I refer to them as the Maxwell rules—that defend against host employers raiding a pension scheme are having a wider detrimental effect, but that is not being addressed by the Bill. Patrick Coyne: It is important that we have a regulatory framework that can cope with different economic conditions. Over a number of years, Parliament has introduced a number of pensions Acts to ensure that defined benefit schemes, which are mostly mature—mostly closed—are secure. There is a real opportunity in the Bill to build on the fantastic success that we have had in creating a nation of savers—11 million more people putting something away for retirement—and turn that system into something that can provide an adequate income in older life. That means turning the focus of the DC system on to value for money. That is where I believe the real potential is.
Q You just triggered another question. Charlotte, can I quickly ask you about the retail distribution review? The retail distribution review came into effect on 1 January 2013. One of the criticisms at the time was that moving from a commission-based model, where IFAs were paid by commission, to being paid by cash, reduced the number of people seeking financial advice from something in the region of more than 50% to something in the region of 9%. RDR, although a very well-intentioned change brought by the FCA, has had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for people who need that advice to get it from an IFA. Have you guys had a think about that within the FCA? Charlotte Clark: It is not in this Bill, but there is a very large work programme going on at the moment around the advice guidance boundary review. As Patrick said, as pensions have changed—there have been big changes in the market over the last 10 years or so—more and more people have come to need support, particularly at the point of retirement, but also in thinking about how you build assets in pensions and more generally. All the targeted support work we are doing is about how you help people more to make these difficult decisions. This Bill is very much about, “How do you get the market right?” but at the same time, we want to make sure that savers have the right support to make the right decisions at the point of retirement or before.
Or, indeed, when they first start to work. As somebody once said, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
Q Thank you. I am particularly interested to hear from the two of you, because one of the interesting things about this Bill is that we have had a lot of lobbying from the profession but very little on behalf of the members of these pension funds, who are so important. Mr Jones, if I may start with you, Unison made the point that there is a clear lack of member voice in the Bill. Do you think that is a fair criticism? Jack Jones: I believe that was aimed specifically at the LGPS requirements, but yes, I would certainly agree with that, and it probably extends to some other areas of the Bill as well. Unison is not alone; all the unions involved in the LGPS scheme would agree that the pooling structures mostly have a clear lack of member representation on their governance boards. There is a real mishmash of governance arrangements and of reporting and transparency arrangements across the different pools at the moment. We have some examples of quite good practice—there are pools with a meaningful number of member representatives on them, but they are few and far between. Many have no representatives or only have observers that do not have any voting powers. Member representation has an important role in the LGPS, with a long history of ensuring that members’ interests are represented when investment decisions are made. Moving away from that has taken something away from the scheme. It is particularly important when looking at measures that will make investment decisions more remote from members by pooling into larger geographical areas and larger funds, and by requiring—or expecting—them to invest in more complicated assets with higher up-front fees. That is the point at which it becomes even more important to have oversight, to give reassurance that members’ interests are at the heart of all those decisions.
Q Could you expand a little on the technicalities of how that would work? Obviously, the trustees are there to represent the members, but they are merely a small board of individuals. If you take something like the British Telecom pension scheme—I do not know how many people are in it, but it is perhaps tens of thousands—how would a group of trustees find out what members are thinking about what they would like? You could have representation, but would you have polls? Jack Jones: That is a good question, and it is a wider issue. Member representatives are there to ensure that people with skin in the game are around the table when decisions are made. They are there to reassure members that people like them—those who will be relying on the scheme for their retirement income—are involved in those decisions. Yes, they cannot represent the full range of any large scheme’s membership. A lot of interesting work could be done around how you find out what members think about how their money should be invested and how we then take that into account in decision making. That is one area where, at the moment, there is potentially a little bit of a gap. The trustees have clear guidance that they can take into account non-financially-material ESG factors, but we hear a lot from unions that there is a very high level of wariness from schemes about actually doing that. They quite often point to their fiduciary duty and say, “Actually, our primary responsibility is towards the financially material factors.” They quite often ignore the guidance that says they can take into account other factors where they know it is in their members’ interest. Work needs to be done on what the best mechanism is to find out what Members think, but there is also a job to make sure that trustees know that they can and potentially should act on that.
Q You raise a very interesting point. Members could come up with an idea. For example, you mentioned ESG, which is a fine thing—I would not disagree with that—but sometimes it could be right to invest in something that a lot of people feel uncomfortable about, such as the arms trade or weapons manufacturers. Very sadly, they are having a bonanza at the moment, because of all the problems that are going on in Ukraine and Gaza. As I say, it is for very tragic reasons. None the less the pension itself could do very well out of investing in that, yet the members may decide it is a bad idea on ethical grounds to invest in something like munitions manufacturing. Jack Jones: Well, it is the members’ money that is being invested. You have to make a balancing decision, but where you have clear evidence that the majority of members have these ethical beliefs that they want to see reflected in how their money is invested, you need to take that into account.
Q My last question—Chris, leap in at any point if you feel you have an answer—is about paying out surpluses, either to local government or defined benefit pension schemes. Lots of people have argued why it is a good idea and good for the country, and all that kind of stuff, but are there any concerns in the TUC or Age UK that it could put some of these pension schemes—particularly the private ones, the defined-benefit ones—into risk unnecessarily and the wrong thing could happen, even though the intention was well meaning. Jack Jones: Clearly that risk is there, and it would have to be managed very carefully.
Q Do you feel the Bill covers that management? Jack Jones: I think it puts a lot of responsibility on trustees to make that assessment. I think it is fair enough to set out the criteria under which trustees might consider surplus release—that is where you have sustained and high surpluses on quite a prudent basis. Whether you actually make that decision to release that surplus and whether you think that is in the members’ best interests relies a lot on trustees making that decision. One particular weakness at the moment is around potentially allowing sole trustees to make that decision. This is usually where you have a closed DB scheme that, instead of having a fully constituted board with member representation, will have a sole corporate trustee appointed by the sponsor. There, the conflicts seem too great to possibly manage for that corporate trustee to make a decision on behalf of the members and say, “Yes, we think it is appropriate for surplus to be released.” It would also be really useful for guidance to lay out the ways in which any kind of surplus release must benefit members as well as the sponsor. There is obviously the argument that if the sponsor then goes and invests that money in, for example, either higher pay or better contributions for DC members or investing in the business, that is in the members’ wider interests, but we need to recognise that although employers suffered quite a lot because of the really high deficits that we saw over a sustained periods by having to put in those employer deficit recovery contributions, members also suffered. You saw schemes being closed and benefits being cut in various ways. We had reductions to accrual, changes to indexation and that kind of thing. Guidance should probably recognise that and say to the trustees, “If you are going to consider releasing surplus, it needs to be done in ways that both benefit the member directly by improving their benefits in some way.” It is a complex question: what is the best way of doing that? I would not want to prescribe that too much. However, the principle that trustees have to consider is how that money is used to actually improve benefits, as well as potentially to—
Q Christopher, do you have any thoughts on that, quickly? Christopher Brooks: We do not work on final salary pensions, so I do not take a view on it.
Q Thank you very much for coming along to give evidence this morning. I want to start with a general question: what do you see as the risks associated with surplus extraction? As we know, a lot of the funds are now in surplus, but we only need interest rates to start crashing back again—it is probably unlikely—and they could go back into deficit. Do you think the safeguards for surplus extraction are sufficient? Colin Clarke: It is a very good question. There are risks that an employer could extract surplus so that it puts the scheme in a position where something might happen in the future that caused them to be underfunded. It is quite key that, although the Bill has some very high-level rule-making powers at the moment, the guidance that comes out alongside that makes very clear the circumstances in which it would be appropriate for trustees to be able to do that. Scheme rules aside, trustees today are able to extract surplus, and they have to follow fiduciary duty, follow a process and get advice from independent advisers to make sure that what they are doing will not jeopardise the security of members’ benefits. The Bill itself is mainly to override any sort of constraints that trustees have within their rules that might prevent them from doing that. However, trustees would still have to follow the same process they would follow today to make sure that they are in a good position from a funding perspective, that they do not take anything out too hastily and that they look a few years ahead. It is not just a case of being able to extract surplus from an affordability point of view today; they need to be looking ahead to the long-term funding position as well.
Q One thing we have not talked about is what the surplus extraction will be used for. If a host company starts taking advantage of this and they invest in building the business, most people would probably agree that that is rather a good thing. However, if they pay out dividends, is that a good thing? If they do share buy-backs, is that a good thing for the host company? How do you think trustees should examine what the purpose is of the fund extraction, and whether it is a good idea or a bad idea—or even an unethical idea? Dale Critchley: It is a trustee decision to take. I do not necessarily think that the trustees need to take into account what the employer is using the surplus for. They are looking at whether it is appropriate to return the surplus to the employer. If you look at a case from 2023 that went to the ombudsman, Aviva was involved in the buy-out for a company that subsequently returned £12 million of surplus to the employer. The trustees, the ombudsman found, had acted quite rightly by taking into account the fact that the company had made considerable contributions, including considerable deficit contributions, over the years, and that it was right, in the trustees’ opinion, that once all of the benefits promised to the members had been secured, the excess was delivered back to the employer. I am not sure that that company or those trustees took into account what that company was going to use the money for; they just looked at whether or not it was appropriate to return the surplus to the employer.
Q But is that right? Do you think that is a good use? Ultimately, as we have discussed, there is always the tricky question about how a fund could go back into deficit again. The flipside of that is that deficit then appears on the balance sheet of the host company, so there is an incentive not to raid it too much. A lot of private equity is very good, but there are certainly accusations that some people can invest into a company through private equity and be quite punchy in terms of revving up the balance sheet of a company, taking out dividends and borrowing lots of money to pay back to the shareholders. If you start opening up the possibility that a pension fund could raid—to use the word “raid” is provocative, but you see what I mean—then an unethical investor could do the wrong thing, even though it is legal. Dale Critchley: I am not a defined benefit pension scheme trustee, but I would expect the trustees to look at the members first of all: are the benefits secured that were promised to the members? Is there room to reasonably augment those benefits? However, to say, “We will only give you this surplus back if you use it for x” is, I think, overstepping the duty of the trustees.
Q That is interesting; I will go and have a think about that one. Both of you manage annuity funds. For the record, I have had a chance to meet representatives of your organisations and have had long discussions about this. One of the interesting points that has come out of conversations with many people and organisations in your position is that, while the thrust of the opportunity of this Bill is to bring together pensions and make them more efficient, and another is to be able to unlock opportunity to invest into the UK and into various opportunities, yet there are some rules that are not being addressed. As one of your colleagues mentioned to me, Dale, an annuity fund is not allowed to invest into equities, yet investing into something like a wind farm would be an ideal opportunity to get a predictable return. Do you think the Bill is missing out on some of these measures that could be updated? Dale Critchley: I do not think it necessarily needs any change incorporating into the Bill. It is a matter for the Prudential Regulation Authority to allow us to make the investments that back our annuities. We would be quite happy to take that up afterwards, but I think that could be achieved through a change to PRA rules rather than incorporation into the Bill.
Q Also, similarly on the equity point: with defined benefit pension schemes, as I mentioned a bit earlier, if you have a deficit, that then appears on the balance sheet. The behavioural outcome of that is that if you are a trustee or from the host company, you would want to avoid the risk—rather like with the BT pension fund, which I think is £7 billion in deficit, and which now restricts the ability of BT to raise money. The behavioural outcome is that you do not invest into something that has high volatility but long term growth, i.e. the equity market. The 1987 stock market crash was hideous at the time—I am probably the only one present who remembers that—but the long-term growth over the equity market proved that was just a mere blip. However, at that time a company would have had a deficit on its balance sheet. Should we change those rules about the deficits on the balance sheet in order to allow pension funds to invest into equity, which is really what we want to get out of this?
T9. It has been more than a fortnight since the Alaska summit, and the deadline set by President Trump at that time has now passed. What diplomatic efforts are the Government making to maintain US focus on the Ukrainian theatre of operations in the face of Russian intransigence?
It is a pleasure to come in on the side of David versus Goliath. Is my right hon. Friend aware that the 10,000 acres being proposed in his constituency could be replaced by 5,000 acres of floating solar on the reservoirs of this country? In my constituency, I have 2,000 acres of raised reservoirs. They are all closed sites; we cannot see the top of them. They are twice as efficient as land-based systems, and they reduce evaporation by 70%. Would that not be a better way of striking a balance than plastering them all over Newark?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate. I want to focus on a local charity in my constituency, Hearts for Herts. In 2017, my constituent Justin Honey-Jones, an experienced paramedic, began the mission to provide an inclusive education programme of lifesaving skills and to champion the provision of public access lifesaving equipment, all from his garage in Hoddesdon. Since then, he has personally trained more than 1,000 people in lifesaving skills, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds, with every penny used to provide and maintain lifesaving equipment. In the last 18 months alone, the charity has installed 75 public access defibrillators across Hertfordshire, and it will install another 55 before February next year. I have been proud to attend many of the openings of those vital defibrillators across my constituency, including at Barclay Park, where the first solar-powered defibrillator in Hertfordshire is now in place, and at the Methodist church in Hoddesdon. Incredibly, just 36 hours after the defibrillator was installed at the church, it was used in a medical emergency. Hearts for Herts rightly focuses its efforts on making defibrillators as accessible as possible and installing them where they are most useful to nearby residents. That aim is justified by stories such as that of the Methodist church defibrillator, and is driven forward by the charity’s unique aim to make all school defibrillators publicly accessible. At no cost to the school, Justin will organise the entire conversion process, ensuring that the crucial equipment can be accessed all year round, at any time of the day. That has saved lives: a converted defibrillator at Broxbourne school was activated on Christmas day, and over this year’s summer holidays the defibrillator at Wormley primary school has been used three times. Hearts for Herts goes further: alongside the defibrillators, it places bleed control kits in its cabinets. The ability to control heavy bleeding is the difference between life and death following, for example, a road traffic collision. That is why Justin has included 200 bleed control kits alongside his defibrillators and has plans to provide even more. The kits buy injured individuals valuable time until an ambulance can arrive. I hope all hon. Members will join me in commending Justin for his incredible work. I look forward to supporting him and Hearts for Herts for many years to come.
We have all been told repeatedly that the Government’s plan for local government will improve local services and save the taxpayer money, but it is increasingly clear that the Bill fails to deliver on those points. This is a forced, top-down change from Westminster that will abolish effective local councils and strip local people of their ability to have a say on local issues. In my constituency I have two district councils, East Herts and Broxbourne, as well as Hertfordshire county council. Under this “devolution” plan, they will be abolished and replaced by new unitary councils. I strongly opposed Hertfordshire county council forming a single new unitary council covering 1.2 million people, and I am pleased to learn that that has been ruled out, but the new unitary councils will still be far larger than the district councils that we currently have. I am sure that many other Members on both sides of the House will share my experience that large local authorities are often less efficient and deliver worse services than smaller, more agile ones. The biggest council in the country is Birmingham, with a population of more than 1 million, and I doubt that anyone here would call it efficient. While no council is perfect, I believe that councils work best when they are close to the people they serve. On top of that, I have serious doubts that these plans will actually save any money. There is no way in which efficiencies will cover the extra cost of spending by these bloated new unitary authorities. The process of reorganisation is expensive and disruptive, and I have yet to see it notably improve the finances of councils that have gone through it. Indeed, many areas will be worse off as a result of it. Responsible Conservative councils such as Broxbourne which have consistently kept within budget and kept council tax low will be forced to merge with debt-ridden neighbouring councils and raise their council tax levels. I know that where unitarisation has happened, councils have gone on to set up delivery of services based on the old district boundaries anyway. The efficiencies expected by the Government have not emerged. I believe that the Government are going down this path of creating big new super-unitary councils, because of their failure to make progress on their target of building 1.5 million new homes. The Government are getting desperate. Rather than building houses where they are needed in London, and rather than building houses where there is appropriate infrastructure or making developers deal with infrastructure first, they are abolishing local councils in order to force through huge arbitrary housing targets in all the wrong places—on precious green belt throughout the United Kingdom.
I recently met Dr Joanna Kerr, an extremely brave survivor of child sexual exploitation and abuse in Scotland. As it stands, the national inquiry will not cover Scotland, and the Scottish National party Government will not launch their own. I ask the Minister again: will she commit herself to extending the national inquiry to cover all parts of the United Kingdom including Scotland, or do victims like Joanna not deserve justice?
In Scotland, we have so-called devolution, but the reality on the ground is that the Scottish Government are centralising more and more power. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Bill creates the potential risk of that?
It is good news that Liberty Steel Dalzell in Scotland is not involved in this immediate crisis, but it is not shroud-waving to suggest that the difficulties in the wider industry may mean that one day it will become involved. When the overdue steel strategy arrives, will it be a 360° look at steel production as a whole, in every corner of this country? Will the Minister help Scottish colleagues get to the bottom of the Scottish Government’s murky deal with this company, which means that they are on the hook for potentially as much as £565 million, a quite incredible sum, which is deeply troubling? The Scottish Government are using the devolution settlement to hide behind. What is going on there? Will she shine a torch of truth on that aspect of the steel industry?
How does my right hon. Friend think my constituents on the Isle of Wight feel about being fused under a combined mayoral authority with Hampshire without having a single say?
As I am sure all Members in this place do, I support the principle of devolution and empowerment—two of the words on the face of the Bill—but this Bill is about centralisation and disempowerment. For the Isle of Wight, it is about fusing our island with Hampshire under a combined mayoral authority, where 93% of the population live in Hampshire on the mainland and just 7% live on the island. There is no empowerment, because island people will not have a say. This plan was last crystalised under the previous Labour Government, who gave islanders a say through a local referendum. Islanders voted no, and the previous Labour Government respected that vote. This Government do not respect my constituents enough to ask them whether they are happy to be fused with a much, much larger county that sits across the water. It is centralising because my local authority, the Isle of Wight council, will lose some of its powers. It will lose powers over strategic planning, so a mayor who represents largely Hampshire voters will be able to allocate more housing on the island, and any mayor who is interested in getting re-elected will, of course, be responsive to the much larger voter cohort in Hampshire. There are three particularly offensive things about the Bill that the Government are imposing on my constituents. Our police authority is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Our health commissioning body is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Our fire and rescue service is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. The vast majority of organisations that operate across our two counties are named after our two counties—Hampshire and Isle of Wight. This Government are going to call our mayoral combined authority Hampshire and Solent, potentially removing our name from all the organisations that the mayor will end up having power over—from our police, our fire and rescue service, our health commissioning body, and who knows what in the future. That will be done without anyone on the Isle of Wight having a say. The second offensive thing about this proposal for my constituency is the powers that it gives the mayor over local transport. The authority will have Solent in the title, yet the mayor will get no contingent powers over the biggest transport issue facing my residents: crossing the Solent on ferries. Solent is in the name of the combined authority, but the mayor will get no powers over ferries. Our ferries are the only unregulated, entirely privatised, foreign-owned, debt-laden key transport provider in the UK. The Government are prepared to nationalise railways, extend the arm of Government in buses and put more money into roads, but they are not prepared to do anything about my constituents being left at the mercy of foreign-owned, debt-laden companies. I will acknowledge that they have used some warm words, and the Minister has visited the island, but this is the opportunity to deliver on those words and put powers in the hands of the mayor to regulate cross-Solent transport. To make a really important point on ringfenced funding, because the Isle of Wight will be fused with Hampshire, the mayor will be able to spend money as they wish across a homogeneous single zone. There is no special provision in the Bill to ensure there is ringfenced funding for the Isle of Wight that cannot be raided for Hampshire. The local integrated care board is already raiding money from our hospice to spend on Hampshire hospices. In the mayoral deal, we need powers to stop that from happening. Finally, in the consultation of my constituents on the key issue of transport, the F-word—ferries—was not mentioned even once.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving me advance sight of her statement today, but here we are again: another day, another Government takeover of a key British manufacturing plant, another 1,500 jobs—1,500 people—facing an incredibly uncertain future, and the prospect of significant job losses alongside the wider economic impact across supply chains and in aerospace, defence and power generation that would result from the collapse of this specialist steelworks. Despite so many warm words about the steel industry, despite so many Labour promises to the people who have worked their whole lives in that industry, and despite the impression of superiority while in opposition, this Labour Government are failing British industry. They are failing to provide certainty of policy and the economic growth that they said was their central mission, and they are failing to get a grip on the issues that affect thousands of working people’s lives. The Minister says she wants to provide certainty to the steel industry and the people who work in it. She says that we can expect a bold steel strategy for the UK, but where is it? The Government are not new any more; they have been in power for a year now, and there is still no clarity on this supposedly bold strategy. The British steel industry faces a fierce dual set of pressures: new 25% US tariffs and continued high energy costs. We all know that the energy costs in this country are too high, yet they have been driven only higher by this Government’s ideological obsession with prioritising decarbonisation over economic growth. Back in May, Liberty Steel warned that it faced significant challenges due to soaring energy costs, but instead of focusing on tackling the underlying causes of expensive energy, the Energy Secretary is backing windmills while leaving Britain’s oil and gas industry in the doldrums. He is leaving our amazing British oil and gas—our greatest energy source—trapped under the North sea. This is economic illiteracy aimed at satisfying their own green obsessions. From steel to chemicals to cars, builders and makers across Britain are paying the price of this Government’s socialist green agenda, and it is their workers and investors who will lose out. On tariffs, despite the economic prosperity deal agreed by the Prime Minister and President Trump, the agreement’s provisions lowering US tariffs on UK-produced steel and steel derivative products have still not come into effect. The Government have repeatedly avoided answering questions in this House on when the agreement will come into effect. We heard no mention whatsoever of it in the statement today or in the note yesterday, so I ask again: when will the provisions lowering US tariffs on UK steel come into effect? Of course, even if those provisions do eventually come to fruition, steelworkers should beware of this Government, who have overpromised and under-delivered before, with devastating impacts for workers. Just look at Jaguar Land Rover. The Prime Minister looked workers dead in the eyes and promised that he would protect their industry and save their jobs. He then used those workers as a Labour propaganda photo opportunity across television and the front pages when the UK-US deal was announced, but little over two months later, Jaguar Land Rover announced it was cutting 500 jobs. The very same workers who were promised everything by the Prime Minister were left out in the cold by this Labour Government’s inability to secure a better trading relationship with our closest ally. Let us today try to get some clarity on what exactly this Minister has done and will do for the British workers impacted at Liberty Steel. First, she announced that the Government had agreed to funding the official receiver and that total—
I am, Mr Speaker. Although I have lots of questions, I will ask just two very quick ones, if that is okay.
I will, Mr Speaker. What is the budget for the official receiver? The Minister has not laid out any costs. She has said that it is related to market conditions but has not set out any estimates. She knows that the Treasury will have approved estimates, so please will she set those out? The Government have made the National Wealth Fund allocate £2.5 billion to British Steel. Can she assure us that they will follow the investment allocation that assures its operational independence—