John Glen

I thank the Minister for his response. I think there has been a lot of common ground across the Chamber this afternoon, but in some areas we have not quite bottomed out what the Government’s view is about empowered pension fundholders electing to discern what amount of their pension should be invested in UK equities. We have to continue that conversation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) for clearly setting out our party’s position on the Pension Schemes Bill; I agreed with her very much. I acknowledge the contributions of the hon. Members for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) and for Torbay (Steve Darling), my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), and my friend the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). I respectfully say to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness that when I was a Minister and I did the capital markets review, the Jonathan Hill review and the Mark Austin review, I did not just passively sit there; I went to the City, listened to people like him who were practitioners in the City in different funds, and worked with my officials to deliver what the City wanted, to optimise the pathway that we were in. That goes down to having deep conversations about which regulations need to be moderated and which need to be withdrawn, such that the Hill review—and this Government have enacted everything that came from it—still leaves me with a sense of frustration, because there was nothing that I would not do that I was asked to do in the interests of London. To believe that somehow we set up four working groups and have a big bang like 1986 or something, and that it will all be straightforward, I think is mistaken. It is a complicated ecosystem, and we will need to look at the risk profile. I probably agree with the hon. Gentleman that there needs to be a greater appetite for risk. We have to reset that risk appetite, because we have had a dozen years since the reset after the global financial crisis, and we need to look at it again. I do think the PRA needs to be challenged, as I think it will be next week by the Financial Policy Committee, on some of the issues around what level of capital it is prepared for banks to have, which is a good place to start. I am very encouraged by the constructive nature of the conversation this afternoon. I hope that the Minister will reflect a little more on the need to empower pension holders to take decisions in the interest of investing more in UK equities.