Lords
Proceedings
16 June 2026
Compassionate Use Medicine Schemes: VAT
What data is there on patients who have been or will be denied treatments that they would otherwise have had? Does the Minister have any estimate of the amount of revenue expected to be raised from this? Are there plans for proper exemptions for patients who are in desperate need of this type of med…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
Local Government Pension Scheme
I thank the Minister for her Answer. In that case, will the Government consider changing the potentially contradictory wording in the draft guidance sent to Local Government Pension Scheme administering authorities for a closed consultation on taking non-financial factors into account in their respo…
Lords
Proceedings
18 May 2026
King’s Speech
My Lords, our country is in the grip of an extremism crisis. Whether it is left versus right, woke versus traditionalists, globalists versus nationalists, there is a growing prevalence of extremist rhetoric and activity, which is increasing social division. I will concentrate my brief contribution o…
Lords
Debate
28 April 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I am pleased to have reached this stage, where we are now all back on the same side. We have had some exchanges when we have said, once upon a time, that we were all pointing in the same direction, and then we had a little bit of slippage away from that, but now we are back together. I am …
Lords
Debate
27 April 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I have little to add to the compelling case set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and indeed by us all throughout the passage of the Bill. Our position remains unchanged: mandation has no place in the Bill and, if the Government are serious about securing its passage, they should rem…
Lords
Proceedings
27 April 2026
Antisemitic Attacks
My Lords, I too am grateful for the funding provided by the Government. I declare my interest as a British Jew.
The Minister says there is no place in British life for antisemitism, but there clearly is. Jews are under attack. Antisemitism has been embedded in British discourse and in some areas of…
Lords
Proceedings
23 April 2026
Women’s Health Strategy
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Government’s women’s health strategy. I know that the Minister is passionate about it.
I want to return to the first question, on osteoporosis. In her answer, the Minister talked about the rollout of fracture liaison clinics across the country—Scotland and Northern Ire…
Lords
Debate
22 April 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
I will make just two points. First, on the issue of mandation, we need to be clear. I am really concerned about the absolutist no mandation point. There is, of course, an issue to discuss as to how effective these measures would be and what effect they would have on trustees’ responsibilities, but i…
Lords
Debate
20 April 2026
4 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
I note that my noble friend the Minister went out of her way to mention pre-1997 increases, even though they do not come up in any of these amendments. The House will welcome future increases being paid, but the failure to do anything about lost increases is still a big topic that is not going away.…
My Lords, prior to this debate we had a Statement showing what can be done in haste, when you should stop and think, in the appointment of Lord Mandelson as the ambassador to the United States of America. I use that analogy here, because one year to move pots is a miniscule amount of time.
The nobl…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
26 March 2026
Golders Green Ambulance Attack
We will hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, next and then we will come back to my noble friend on the Labour Benches.
Lords
Debate
23 March 2026
9 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 120, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. It is important to look at the issues he rightly raised that relate to the market. Indeed, Amendment 165 is particularly important, given that the injustices, some of which we will come on to in later groups, see…
Can the Minister confirm for the House whether there are any checks or reporting on accuracy of the contributions? There is a requirement, but is anybody actually checking whether the amounts are correct?
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
19 March 2026
Middle East
My Lords, I too thank our Armed Forces and echo the greetings “Eid Mubarak” to all who are celebrating tomorrow, but I want to pick up on what the Minister has already said. The Iranian regime, through the IRGC, has cracked down violently on its own people, killing tens of thousands. Via its proxy, …
Lords
Debate
19 March 2026
10 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I will not detain the House too long on this amendment. It is a small amendment, but it is very important for members of pension schemes in auto-enrolment, particularly women.
The proposal in the Bill is to move small pots, under £1,000, which are considered dormant—in other words, they h…
My Lords—
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
16 March 2026
2 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I will speak to various of my amendments in this group. We have moved on now to value for money. Of course, I fully support the Government’s aim of moving from talking about cost as the only arbiter of whether a scheme is good, and low cost being the measure of good, to looking at a much w…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her remarks. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken in support of my amendments, in particular Amendment 24, which I had hoped the Government might be a little more favourable towards than they seem to have been. I understand that the Minister says that the G…
Lords
Debate
16 March 2026
4 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 2, 4 and 5, so I will speak to those. I support the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, in his Amendment 1. The addition of the Pensions Regulator, alongside the FCA, is very important. I must declare my interest as a non-executive director of a pensions administrat…
My Lords, I support this amendment. This is an important time to talk about the contribution rates to the Local Government Pension Scheme. When funding has changed so substantially in a very short period of time, having an interim review clearly makes sense, for not only the local authority but the …
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
11 March 2026
3 contributions
Pension Schemes: Ministerial Powers
My Lords, in begging leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice, I declare my interests as set out in the register.
My Lords, the Pension Schemes Bill contains a reserve power on asset allocation, designed as a backstop to the voluntary commitments made by the pensions industry under the Mansion House Accord. The Government do not currently expect to use this power. Were this power ever exercised, schemes that ca…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Debate
5 March 2026
8 contributions
National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill
My Lords, I first need to declare my interests as a non-executive director of a pensions administration company and as a board adviser to an auto-enrolment master trust. This is a very large group of amendments, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her excellent introduction. The …
As I think the noble Lord knows, I have enormous sympathy with everything he says, and there is a strong case for reforming and improving the incentives for low earners. However, does he not accept that, if you change for the worse the incentives on the people who earn least, for whom it is most dif…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
24 February 2026
9 contributions
National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill
My Lords, first, I need to declare my interests as set out in the register as a non-executive director of a pensions administration company and as a board adviser to a pension provider.
I believe that the Bill is premature—the extent of the amendments being proposed to it is evidence that it has be…
May I ask for some clarification? The Government’s intention is to try to encourage higher pension contributions. If an employer decides to increase their pension contributions, how would one know that that had not been at the expense of some salary they might otherwise have paid? Would it just neve…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
12 February 2026
Counter-Extremism Strategy
My Lords, I add my gratitude and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, on not only securing this debate but on his continued leadership on this issue. I shall conclude the Back-Bench contributions to this debate with two key questions for the Minister.
The first stems from the confusion,…
Lords
Committee Stage
5 February 2026
15 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I support and have added my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I support all his remarks, especially on the only excuse for not recognising that people need pre-1997 indexation going forward. There is a wrong that is being corrected; therefore, that wrong probably appl…
My Lords, the amendments in this group are designed to give the Government another way of recognising the injustice that has occurred, which their very welcome amendments recognise for members who have lost their pre-1997 inflation protection. I am trying, through this route, to give the Government …
+13 more contributions in this session
Lords
Debate
4 February 2026
National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill
My Lords, I wish to express deep concern about the Government’s decision to impose a £2,000 cap on salary sacrifice arrangements for pension contributions. This measure may appear technical, but its consequences for retirement saving are anything but trivial. It raises serious questions about the co…
Lords
Committee Stage
3 February 2026
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I support this amendment in principle. I share the concerns just expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, about the risk of mandating a substantial proportion of any pension fund to be invested in what is, in effect, the highest-risk end of the equity spectrum, which is meant in other cir…
Lords
Committee Stage
26 January 2026
11 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I, too, have a number of amendments in this group and I will address my remarks mainly to them. Amendments 99 and 106 recommend removing the specific figure of £25 billion from the Bill and replacing it with a figure to be determined by the Government nearer the time, I hope, after detaile…
If the intention is to maintain these specific limits in the Bill, I hope that consideration will be given to an existing new entrant pathway—rather than only a new entrant pathway from 2030 onwards—and some kind of innovation pathway, as suggested by my noble friends Lord Younger and Lady Stedman-S…
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
22 January 2026
13 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 46A from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, to which I have added my name and which she so eloquently explained. I will speak to my own Amendment 47, which she referred to and which looks at the value-for-money ratings from the point of view of members. For me, t…
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 58. My remarks will apply to all the other amendments in this group, apart from Amendments 64 and 65, to which I will speak shortly, and Amendment 69 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, which I also support.
My views on this group of amendments fo…
+11 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
19 January 2026
6 contributions
Pension Schemes Bill
My Lords, in moving Amendment 26, I shall speak to my similar Amendment 39, to both of which I am grateful for the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, adding her name. To follow on from the words of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I am introducing these amendments as a marker, because I genuinely believe that…
May I ask my noble friend a couple of questions? I totally accept the rationale for the change happening only post-1997, but does he accept that because we now have surpluses and there is this gap, a one-off payment would be a potential way of recognising the problem faced by the pensioners without …
+4 more contributions in this session