Torsten Bell MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I think recent progress on the pensions dashboard means that that deserves a little less laughter. What we are seeing at the moment is success, driving the first connections to the dashboards. Obviously, all schemes and providers are due to be connected by the autumn of 2026, but I will provide good notice of when we can give a firm date for that. My hon. Friend and near neighbour has secured himself early warning of exactly that happening. We need to make the choices clearer for people as they move from building retirement savings to using them. The Bill gives pension schemes a duty to provide default solutions for savers’ retirement income—yes, with clear opt-outs. As well as reducing complexity and risk for savers, that will support higher returns because providers will be able to invest in assets for longer if they do not need to secure the possibility of having to provide full drawdown at retirement. Each of these measures to drive up returns will have an impact on their own, but it is their cumulative impact that matters most, especially when it is compounded over the decades that we save for a pension. To give the House a sense of scale, someone on average earnings saving over their career could see their retirement pot boosted by £29,000 thanks to the higher returns that the Bill supports. That is a significant increase for something that should matter to us all. The reforms that I have set out will transform the DC pensions landscape, but with £1.2 trillion-worth of assets supporting around 9 million people, defined-benefit schemes remain vital—they have already been raised by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). Their improved funding position is hugely welcome. Around 75% are now in surplus, which has enabled far more schemes to reach buy-out with an insurer. Many more intend to do so, welcoming the security that buy-out can offer. Others may not be able to reach buy-out or may value running on their scheme for at least a time. The Bill provides those trustees with a wider range of options. Clauses 8 and 9 give more trustees the option to safely share surplus funds, which is something that many can already do.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her oversight of all our pensions, which I think is reassuring. [ Laughter. ] Sorry; it is reassuring! I will come directly to her point, because I know that is one question that hon. Members on both sides of the House will want to raise. Let me just say that the Bill explicitly recognises the fiduciary duty of trustees towards their members.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member invites me to skip quite a long way forward in my speech, and it is a long speech.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  That was not the support I was hoping for from the Chair—understandable, but harsh. I will come to some of the points that the right hon. Member raises. I think he is referring particularly to pre-1997 indexation, which I shall come to. As I said, the Bill includes a reserved power that will allow the Government to require larger auto-enrolment schemes to invest a set percentage into wider assets. That reflects the wider calls that have been made for this change but have not led to its taking place. What pension providers are saying is that they face a collective action problem, where employers focus too narrowly on the lowest charges, not what matters most to savers: the highest returns. I do not currently intend to use the power in the Bill, but its existence gives clarity to the industry that, this time, change will actually come. Some argue—I will come to some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier)—that this somehow undermines the duty that pension providers have to savers. That is simply wrong. First, the Bill includes clear safeguards to prioritise savers’ interests and is entirely consistent with the core principle of trustees’ fiduciary duties. Clause 38 includes an explicit mechanism, which I have discussed with Members from the main three parties in this House, to allow providers to opt out if complying risks material detriment to savers. Secondly—this is the key point that motivates a lot of the Bill—savers are being let down by the status quo. There is a reason major pension schemes across the rest of the world are already investing in this more diverse range of assets. Fragmentation within the pensions industry happens within providers, not just between them. Some insurers have thousands of legacy funds, so clause 41 extends to contract schemes the ability that trust-based schemes already have to address that. Providers will be able to transfer savers to another arrangement without proactive individual consent if, and only if, it is independently certified as being in the member’s best interest. Another point that I hope is of common ground across the House is that we need to do more to realise the untapped potential of the local government pension scheme in England and Wales. We need scale to get the most out of the LGPS’s £400 billion-worth of assets. Again, the Bill will turn that consensus into concrete action. It provides for LGPS assets spread across 86 administering authorities to be fully consolidated into six pools. That will ensure that the assets used to provide pensions to its more than 6 million members—predominantly low-paid women—are managed effectively and at scale. Each authority will continue to set its investment strategy, including how much local investment it expects to see. In fact, these reforms will build on the LGPS’s strong track record of investing in local economic growth, requiring pension pools to work with the likes of mayoral combined authorities. In time, bigger and more visible LGPS pools will help to crowd private pension funds and other institutional investors into growth assets across the country. Our measures will build scale, support investment and deliver for savers, but the Bill does more to ensure that working people get the maximum bang for every buck saved. To reinforce the shift away from an excessively narrow focus on costs, clause 5 provides for a new value-for-money framework. For the first time, we will require pension schemes to prove that they provide value for money, with standardised metrics. That will help savers to compare schemes more easily, and drive schemes themselves to focus on the value that they deliver. For persistently poor performers, regulators will have the power to enforce consolidation. That will protect savers from getting stuck in poorly performing schemes—something that can knock thousands of pounds off their pension pots. We are also at last addressing the small pension pots issue. I was out door-knocking in Swansea earlier this spring, and a woman in her mid-30s told me that something was really winding her up—and it was not me knocking on the door. [ Laughter. ] This is a very unsupportive audience. It was trying to keep track of small amounts of pension savings that she had from old jobs; the only thing that was worse was that her husband kept going on about it. There are now 13 million small pension pots that hold £1,000 or less floating around. Another million are being added each year. That increases hassle, which is what she was complaining about, with over £31 billion-worth of pension pots estimated to currently be lost. It costs the pensions industry around £240 million each year to administer. Clause 20 provides powers for those pots to be automatically brought together into one pension scheme that has been certified as delivering good value. Anyone who wants to can of course opt out, but this change alone could boost the pension pot of an average earner by around £1,000. Of course, once you have a pension pot, the question is: what do you do with it? We often talk about pension freedoms, but there is nothing liberating about the complexity currently involved in turning a pension pot into a retirement income. You have to consolidate those pots, choose between annuities, lump sums, drawdowns or cashing out. You have to analyse different providers and countless products. Choice can be a good thing, but this overwhelming complexity is not—77% of DC savers yet to access their pension have no clear plan about how to do so.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member is giving a lucid speech, as he always does—he speaks very well—but I am failing to understand exactly the point he is making. He is talking about a local government pension scheme, which is guaranteeing him an income in retirement, as if it is a defined-contribution scheme where he is the one at risk from changes in the investment performance. It is local taxpayers with their employer contribution who ultimately bear the risk in the scheme he is talking about. It is our job to make sure that those taxpayers have the best possible chance of not having bad returns, leading to bad outcomes for them. He is not at risk in the way he is talking about.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for his question, and for the discussions that we have had on this important topic. He spent years working on this. The priority for MaPS right now is to ensure that we have the system set up to deal with the additional calls that are likely to come when pension dashboards are rolled out, but I will keep in mind the point that he raises. I think he and a number of hon. Members wrote to me about exactly that point. As I promised in my letter, I will keep it under review, but we must not overburden the system, because we need it to be able to deliver when pension dashboards come onstream.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  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.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  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. [ Official Report , 1 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 3WC.] (Correction) 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.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I always thank my hon. Friend for her contributions. She makes a powerful case. I will come on to the reasons why we do not agree with that case, but I understand her point. This is a cohort of women who have too often faced discrimination in the world of work, with lasting effects on the value of their workplace pensions. They have borne the brunt of unequal caring responsibilities, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Salford set out, historically the genders have had very unequal state pensions. That, at least, has been addressed, but the workplace pension divide remains as big as ever.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who have spoken powerfully today, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) for leading today’s debate on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee. This is an important topic that she and I have discussed several times, both in public and in private. I look forward to her closing remarks. When we retire, the question of how comfortable we will be in retirement and in the years leading up to it— ot least given the growth in pre-retirement poverty, partly due to ill health, as the hon. Member for Mid Dunbarton-shire (Susan Murray) set out—is crucial to all of us. We ask that question of ourselves, and of those we care about. As the debate has shown, many hon. Members rightly ask that about the country as a whole. We should expect people to have strong views on the state pension age. We all know women affected by the changes made, since 2010 in particular, that affect that age group—constituents, friends and family. I have declared a family interest on this front before, alongside my professional one.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know, without having met her, that his mum will not be disappointed in him. Obviously, the point he makes is absolutely right; it is the point that I was just making. I think we are all aware of the experiences that this generation of women have had to face, not just in the labour market but much more broadly. He makes a powerful case, as always. Now, there is broad political consensus that it is right to equalise the state pension age for men and women, but the acceleration of the state pension age increases by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition was more politically controversial. I was not going to mention it, but I will gently remind Liberal Democrat Members who have spoken today—the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) and for Lewes (James MacCleary) used particularly strong language on this point—that it was the choice made by their party. Not to mention that acceleration at all— [ Interruption. ] If Members are going to use strong language about difficult choices, then they need to reflect on the choices that led to that point. My party opposed those choices at the time. However, neither the acceleration nor the longer planned increases to the SPA legislated for since 1995 were matters the ombudsman investigated. This matters, given that it is the desirability of the original policy decisions made by previous Governments that is most frequently referred to by campaigners and by hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) today, who focus on the increases to the state pension age. In contrast, the ombudsman’s focus was on how those changes were communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions, as the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire very clearly pointed out. As all hon. Members know, we carefully considered the ombudsman’s findings. We always will, given its important role, which was set out by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) today and in several debates that I have taken part in with him in recent months.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  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.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I will give way, but then I will wrap up before Madam Deputy Speaker loses her patience.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  Well, the right hon. Member has demonstrated more affection on previous occasions is what I would gently say to that. If he is asking me whether the Government’s position has changed, I am afraid that the answer, from his perspective, is no.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House for much longer than me, so he knows how this works. Parties set out their manifestos, and I am sure that if he looks at the Labour party’s 2024 manifesto, he will find there different words from the ones he has just shared with the House. The Government agree that letters should have been sent sooner. We have apologised, and we will learn the lessons from that. However, as hon. Members and campaigners on this issue are well aware, we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or to remedy—and neither, reading carefully between the lines of the speech from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), do the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman spoke very eloquently, as always. Let us look at what the ombudsman said when it made its decision to lay the report before Parliament. It was not looking ahead to what a future Government might do; it knew that the then Conservative Government would have come to a similar conclusion. Hon. Members should remember that the long debate over those years between the Government and the ombudsman was held in private, so the ombudsman was aware of the approach of the Government, to whom it was talking in a way that those of us outside Government at the time could not have known. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) asked about the decision not to accept an ombudsman’s findings. They are right to say that it is unusual, but it is definitely not unprecedented. I should spell out that the Government have accepted other ombudsman findings since, so it is not right to say that this is some kind of fundamental break in the approach by Government.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I think we have discussed versions of this question before. Yes, there have been models that may have focused on a subset of women—for example, those on pension credit—but that still comes up against the fundamental challenge of payments based on some other qualifying condition, which in this case is income, and not the injustice that has been suffered. The ombudsman set out that compensation was due for the injustice, not just the virtue of being a woman born in the 1950s.

• 3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source

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  I refer the hon. Lady to our very detailed response, which was published in December. It runs over a number of pages, so I will send her the relevant extracts on the conclusions that we have considered. [Interruption.] I will have to conclude now because I am testing the patience of Madam Deputy Speaker. I recognise that none of what I have said today is likely to change the minds of many Members here, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has kindly pointed out to me. I know that, not least because I see many familiar faces from similar debates in Westminster Hall, as the even more friendly right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has told me. The campaigners, too, are unlikely to be satisfied. Their tenacity has been clear for all to see and has been attested to sufficiently today. They are right to continue to point to the wider context, which is that society has been far from universally kind to women born in the 1950s, as they have wrestled with discrimination in the labour market and beyond, which is what the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake) set out earlier. Nothing regarding the case I have set out today diminishes any of that. However, the Government have made their decision and we owe it to everybody to be clear about it. It is right that hon. Members hold us to account for it, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) has set out. That has happened today and in other debates in the House, including Westminster Hall. As I have said before, there are lessons for the Department to learn, and learn them we will. We will also continue to support women born in the 1950s and pensioners generally, not least by raising the state pension and turning around our NHS. I know that they and hon. Members will expect nothing less.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment: Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  I can reassure the hon. Member that there will be an increase in the Northern Ireland Executive’s funding through the annually managed expenditure forecasting process. This will be confirmed at the autumn Budget in the usual way. More importantly to pensioners in Northern Ireland, he will be aware that in June, the Communities Minister in Northern Ireland confirmed that winter fuel payments will be available in Northern Ireland on the same basis as in England and Wales.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment: Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  As so often, my hon. Friend says it all. We have seen record investment in the Scottish Government’s budget, but we do not see waiting lists falling in Scotland, as they are in England and Wales.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment: Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  Our priority at the moment is to extend eligibility for the winter fuel payment, as the hon. Member and I have discussed on a number of occasions, but obviously that sits within a wider set of support. He will have seen the extension to the warm home discount announced in recent days and the extension of the household support fund. As he is well aware, social security is a transferred policy in Northern Ireland.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is right to highlight the question of pensioners’ living standards, and we are taking action right the way across the board to deal with that. She will have seen the increases in the state pension in April. We have seen nearly 60,000 extra awards for pension credit over the course of the year since last July, compared with the year previously. On her question about pre-1997 indexation, this issue was recently discussed at the Work and Pensions Committee, and we have set out our response to that Committee’s report.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  Fortunate.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Consumers have waited too long for the change before us. More than 10 million people now use buy now, pay later products. When used responsibly, such products can help people manage their finances. Many especially value the fact that the products are interest-free, often making them an affordable alternative to credit cards and personal loans. Yet, unlike those traditional forms of credit, buy now, pay later products sit outside the UK’s consumer credit regulatory framework. That is because buy now, pay later products fall under an exemption originally designed to help small businesses offer instalment plans to their customers. In recent years, however, innovative fintechs have used the exemption to roll out buy now, pay later products offering to customers, usually at an online checkout, new ways to pay via the likes of Klarna, PayPal and Clearpay. Small firms do not need authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority, nor are buy now, pay later agreements required to adhere to the Consumer Credit Act. That approach makes sense for small businesses offering simple instalment plans for goods and services, but it is not right for the large-scale consumer credit lenders now in this market. Back in February 2021, under the previous Government, the Woolard review set out the risks of that unregulated market. First, there are no rules on what information buy now, pay later firms must give their customers. Too many people are left unclear about what they owe, and some do not even realise that they have taken out credit. Secondly, the firms are not required to check whether people can afford these products. Finally, that lack of checks brings real danger.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an important point that is generally relevant to financial services regulation: we want the availability of credit for people, but we want it done safely. That is exactly what the changes are about. As I was saying, debt can quickly mount up when people take out several buy now, pay later products at once, with no one checking what they already owe. The previous Government rightly pledged to bring the products into regulation, although sadly did not get to the point of delivering on that promise. I am proud that, in May, this Government laid this draft order to bring unregulated buy now, pay later products offered by third-party lenders into regulation under the Financial Conduct Authority. That will bring proper oversight of such firms and strong protection for consumers. In future, buy now, pay later firms will have to carry out robust affordability checks, ensuring that consumers are protected from taking on debt that they cannot afford. Firms will also be required to give consumers clear information. That will help people to decide whether buy now, pay later is right for them, and to know that support is available if they face financial difficulty. Buy now, pay later users will gain strong rights under the Consumer Credit Act, including section 75 protection. That will make it easier for consumers to get a refund if something goes wrong with a purchase. Crucially, consumers will have the right to take their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. That will guarantee them access to a fair, independent resolution if problems arise. Those are the rights and protections that users of other regulated credit products already enjoy. It is only right that users of buy now, pay later products receive them, too. There is also something new: the Financial Conduct Authority will be able to develop a modernised information disclosure regime for buy now, pay later products, set by FCA rules, not by the Consumer Credit Act. We have recognised, in line with feedback, including from consumer groups, that the existing provisions of the Consumer Credit Act on information requirements do not suit interest-free, short-term buy now, pay later products. However, this is not special treatment for these products. On the same day as we laid the draft order that we are debating today, we launched a consultation to reform the Consumer Credit Act more widely. Lastly, let me stress that a new regulatory regime is not just a win for consumers. Buy now, pay later firms will benefit as well. For years, they have faced regulatory uncertainty. This order ends that uncertainty, and we have ensured that the order delivers a smooth transition to regulation for them. They will be able to continue lending under a temporary permissions regime while the FCA authorisation is under review. That guarantees business as usual, for them and for customers, throughout the transition. Twelve months after this order is made, the new regulatory regime for these products will come into force. In that time, the FCA will consult on and finalise the rules that will govern buy now, pay later lending. We must not delay giving millions of consumers the vital protection that they deserve. I thank the Committee for its attention to this issue and would welcome any questions from the shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury or any other Members.