Torsten Bell

Torsten Bell

Labour — Swansea West

Speaking in the House of Commons on 19 March 2026

Debate

Pre-1997 Pensions: Discretionary Increases

Contribution

I think there is a slightly harder case, which is examples where schemes had an established practice of paying discretionary increases—my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mentioned Nissan cases from before the turn of this century, where that was the practice—and that was seen as the norm, and then, for different phases, such as when schemes slipped into deficit, as many did, they stopped and then did not restart when the surplus arrived. That is the case raised here. In many ways, those are the harder cases to understand, and I will come to how we think about such cases as we go forward.

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