Pension Schemes Bill: Amendment 15

What happened: The House of Commons voted on Amendment 15 to the Pension Schemes Bill on 3 December 2025. The amendment, tabled by opposition parties, was defeated by 303 votes to 154. The government's own version of the Bill, along with a package of government new clauses it had introduced, was therefore preserved.

Why it matters: The Pension Schemes Bill makes significant changes to how occupational pension schemes operate in the United Kingdom. Among the most substantial changes being debated were new government clauses (31 to 33) introducing prospective indexation of Pension Protection Fund and Financial Assistance Scheme payments relating to pensions built up before 6 April 1997, linked to the Consumer Prices Index and capped at 2.5%. This affects over 250,000 members of those schemes, with the average PPF compensation expected to rise by around £400 per year over five years. A separate and contested question, raised by multiple MPs, concerns whether similar protections should extend to members of private defined-benefit schemes run by solvent companies, many of them large multinationals, who have not passed on any indexation increases for periods of up to 23 years.

The politics: The vote divided largely along government-versus-opposition lines. Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs voted unanimously against the amendment, while Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party all voted in favour. There were no notable cross-party rebels on the government benches. The result reflects the broad arithmetical dominance of the Labour majority in the current Parliament. Although there is stated cross-party agreement on the broad aims of pension reform, the opposition parties sought specific changes the government declined to accept, preferring instead its own set of new clauses tabled alongside the Bill.