Lord Ashcombe (Con)

My Lords, I declare my interest as an employee of Marsh, whose sister company Mercer is a pension consultancy, master trust provider and signature to the Mansion House Accord. I speak in strong support of this group, beginning with Amendment 52, which would remove the power to mandate asset allocation while preserving the requirement on scale. This is a targeted, proportionate change. It keeps the legitimate objective of ensuring sufficient scale in the market without stripping trustees of the fundamental responsibility to make investment decisions. I have never supported—and it has become abundantly clear in recent weeks that the bulk of industry does not support—the Government’s proposed power to mandate asset allocation. I have listened carefully over the past weeks to Ministers in both Houses, who say that these clauses are simply a reserve power intended to ensure that the Mansion House Accord operates. Even accepting that characterisation, the House should not lose sight of two important points. First, the schemes that signed up to the accord did so in good faith and with trustee agreement. Secondly, those signatories did so on the basis of explicit caveats—caveats that recognised trustees’ fiduciary duties, the necessity of a reliable pipeline of assets and the imperative that the market shifts from a narrow focus on cost to a broader assessment of value across the whole investment chain, including by clients. It is therefore deeply disappointing to see the Government invoke the Mansion House Accord agreement as though it represents blanket industry support for intervention in private finance and trustee decision-making. It does not. Conflating a voluntary conditional industry commitment with a license to centralise investment allocation decisions risks doing grave damage to good governance and to member outcomes. For these reasons, I urge noble Lords to support these amendments, remove the dangerous power to mandate asset allocation, keep the focus on scale and let trustees, acting with their fiduciary and statutory duties, continue to determine the investment strategies that best serve their members. These amendments achieve that balance.