PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Pension Scheme Investment - 14 November 2023 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

While we are basking in those questions, would somebody like to answer them?

In my speech at Mansion House in July, I announced reforms to boost pensions, increase investment in UK businesses, and improve UK capital market competitiveness. Those reforms could result in over £1,000 a year of additional retirement income and unlock £75 billion-worth of investment in high-growth businesses.

I thank my hon. Friend for his interest in this issue—of course, he has great experience of local government. Working with the former Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who I see is in the Chamber, we announced major reforms in July to help local government pension funds lead the way in the transformation we are looking for, in particular by sending a direction that they should invest in pools worth more than £50 billion. That will make it easier for them to have the expertise necessary to invest in infrastructure.

I welcome the proposals that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made in his Mansion House speech, which will increase investment in the United Kingdom. In his upcoming autumn statement, I implore him to build on his Budget announcement with a policy that was originally advocated for in a paper by the Adam Smith Institute, a think-tank I am proud to be patron of, as is set out in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I implore him to make full expensing permanent and to scrap the hated factory tax.

I have a very small bone to pick with my right hon. Friend, because when I became Chancellor I was hoping to say that I was the first Chancellor who was once an entrepreneur, but he pipped me to the post. However, he is absolutely right to say how important it is to have competitive business investment taxes. I was very proud in the spring Budget to introduce full expensing for three years, which gives us some of the most competitive business taxes in the OECD. Only five other countries do that, and I will of course keep under review any possibility to extend that tax break.

Is investment not needed in the UK given that 13 years of Tory rule have resulted in a £137 billion UK deficit? Meanwhile independent Ireland has a €10 billion surplus from its economic growth and investment. That is an Ireland without the oil or natural resources of Scotland, which is now about to start a sovereign wealth fund. Where did the failing crisis-hit UK go wrong and independent Ireland go right? The clue, by the way, is in the question.

I find that a very curious question. If the hon. Member is proud of Scotland’s natural resources, why does he want to cancel North sea oil and gas exploration, which is the very thing that can give families across the United Kingdom security from the energy shocks we have seen from things such as the invasion of Ukraine?

There is encouraging news in that the Pension Insurance Corporation has recently announced that it is going to invest in helping to support the building of 1,200 new affordable homes in this city. Does the Chancellor agree that pension funds could be a very important source of capital for developing social rented housing around the country—Eden Housing Association, South Lakes Housing, and Westmorland and Furness Council, for example? Will he look at the rules and bring in greater incentives for pension investment funds to invest in affordable housing across the country?

We are already working on proposals in that very area. Broadly speaking, we have one of the most robust and resilient pension fund sectors in the world, but we are doing a lot of work to remove the barriers to investing back into the UK. Things such as affordable housing, infrastructure and our growth businesses are areas of great potential.