The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury
Labour MP for Swansea West
I would like to notify the House that the Department for Work and Pensions has obtained approval from His Majesty’s Treasury for an increase of £1,610,000,000 to non-voted AME budgets and the total AME budget control, to fund increases to the Winter Fuel Payment in line with the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2025.
I would like to notify the House that the Department for Work and Pensions has obtained approval for an advance from the Contingencies Fund of £1,610,000,000 The voted cash requirement for cash to be paid into the Social Fund exceeds that provided for in the Main Estimate 2025-26 due to changes to eligibility in the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payments Regulations 2025. The Contingencies...
At the heart of this Government’s pension reforms is the goal of bigger and better pension schemes. We are legislating for that in the Pension Schemes Bill by requiring all local government pension scheme assets to be pooled next year, and multi-employer defined contribution schemes to have at least £25 billion-worth of assets. This reform agenda will deliver returns for savers and ensure...
The LGPS actually has a strong track record of local investment of exactly the kind that my hon. Friend mentions, including in social housing, and we want to build on that record. The Pension Schemes Bill will introduce requirements for local government pension scheme pools to work with strategic authorities, including mayoral strategic authorities, on local investment...
I thank the hon. Member for his question. I agree with where he started, but unfortunately he then went on to praise some of the work done under the last Government, when we did not see the investment that he talks about coming through and reaching entrepreneurs, who he rightly says we should do more to support. That is what the Mansion House Accord, which we have now put in place and...
My hon. Friend is always a powerful advocate, both for the fast-growing companies in his constituency and for the right pension policy for the UK as a whole, as we saw when he sat on the Pension Schemes Public Bill Committee. Sterling 20 is a new, investor-led partnership between the UK’s 20 largest pension funds and insurers. It was established at the regional investment summit in...
No, not at all.
I can reassure the hon. Member that we are scrapping the attitude of the Conservative party, which blocked any building from happening anywhere in this country year after year. Houses were blocked. Railways were blocked. Anything that involved any difficult choices was blocked by a party that gave up governing long before the general election.
Pensions tax relief is one of the most expensive reliefs in the personal tax system, costing £78.2 billion in 2023/24. The Government remains committed to encouraging pension saving, to help ensure that people have an income, or funds on which they can draw, throughout retirement.
The previous government made the decision to freeze the income tax Personal Allowance at its current level of £12,570 until April The previous government published a Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN) setting out the impacts.
The McCloud remedy under the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 took effect from October 2023 and will deliver a full remedy to all affected public service pension scheme members. Schemes are currently implementing the remedy. As part of this, all affected members are receiving a remediable service statement setting out the details of their pension entitlements and some...
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and National Records Scotland (NRS) publish annual data on deaths by sex and age group on their websites.
The proportion of the self-employed who are saving into a pension has fallen significantly from almost 50% in the late 1990s to less than 20% at present. While self-employed workers are not eligible for Automatic Enrolment, the National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) must accept individuals who are self-employed, meeting certain conditions, who wish to join a pension scheme. The Department...
The Pensions Regulator and Health and Safety Executive are directly accountable to Parliament. The information requested is published in their respective annual report and accounts, which are laid before the House of Commons and publicly available.
DWP is taking a number of steps to protect our vulnerable customers from online benefit scams. This includes raising public awareness of benefit scam messages on the Gov.uk website. Our most recent press release relating to Winter Fuel Payment warned our customers to be alert to text message scams in advance of next month’s payments and urging them to forward any suspicious texts to 7726....
The Government has increased the level at which Winter Fuel Payments are means-tested in England and Wales from winter 2025/26 so that the vast majority of pensioners – around 9 million individuals – will benefit from them.
