As you may well be aware the Pension Schemes Bill 2025 has now been passed in Parliament and as such it is now the Pensions Schemes Act 2026.

Our attempts to get something into it regarding regular annual increases for pre-1997 service were dismissed by the Government despite support from a lot of MPs. When it went to the House of Lords there was similar support for our cause but our proposed changes were dismissed by the Government when it came back to the Commons.

There was also some concern about the area of the Bill that has introduced an extended ability for Employers with Defined Benefit schemes such as our own to request that where a scheme was in surplus, this surplus could be returned to the Employer.

We have been very vocal about this and significant concerns remain about the distribution of fund surpluses and equitable treatment of all fund stakeholders’.

“A huge thank you to all of you who wrote letters. We ended up with the support of around 130 MPs and a number of very senior figures in the Lords.”      

Through the Pension Alliance, we have made numerous objections and have met with the Pensions Minister (Torsten Bell). He claimed to understand our concerns but has stated that “ …if trustees wish to insist on discretionary pre-1997 indexation as a condition for surplus release, they will be entitled to do so ( TB 3 December 2025) .”

We would now like to hold him to this and propose to comment on secondary legislation that will shortly be drawn up to give full guidance on how the Surplus request process will work,  following a Department for Work and Pension (DWP) consultation that is to be issued shortly.

The Pre-97 HPPA & Alliance Pension Justice (of which we are a member) intends to produce its own secondary legislation that will propose a number of steps that need to be considered before any surplus can be released and to attempt to put into practice what the Minister has publicly (including in the House of Commons) said. It is also  going to be lobbying the DWP and the Pensions Regulator (TPR) both of whom will be responsible for administering how the surplus process will work in the real world.

So we may yet be asking you to write further letters to your MPs  👍

Many thanks,

Steve Ladle