This week the Government watered down powers to force investment decisions on pension schemes in the Pensions Scheme Bill.
Ministers agreed to seek an independent assessment before using the power and said schemes would be able to opt out if they did not believe it was in savers’ best interests. Richard gave a cautious welcome to the amendments proposed by the Government which “watered down” the worst aspects of the “mandation” powers which threatened to allow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to reach into people’s private pension savings and direct them to her pet projects.
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Richard Fuller MP said:
Thanks to great work by Helen Whately MP, Conservative Peers and the Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords, Baroness Sharon Bowles, the Government made a range of changes to their controversial proposals on investment powers. But we are not out of the woods yet. The Government should have dropped the powers completely. As a matter of principle, those powers are wrong,
Richard has been warning since the general election that a Labour government would come after people's pension by mandating large pension funds to back British assets by instructing investment in domestic infrastructure, clean energy and fast-growing businesses. To read more about these warnings and what it might mean, please visit this article and this article.
