Should the government introduce a Value for Money framework requiring pension schemes to publish performance ratings?

Pension reform rarely produces near-unanimity, but this did: red-to-green ratings for schemes, with poor performers forced to improve or close, passed by something close to six votes to one. For a policy area normally riven by arguments over state versus private provision, the striking thing here is how little disagreement there was to find.

The only real wrinkle sits with the 55-64s, who still backed Yes comfortably but supplied nearly all the No votes in the sample — plausibly the group closest to drawing their pension and most alert to the disruption of schemes being forced to merge or close before they retire. Everyone either side of them, from the 35-44s to the over-65s, voted almost as one.

The result echoes a broader shift in economic policy since the FCA's Consumer Duty and the Mansion House reforms: a cross-party appetite for transparency and consolidation in an industry long accused of opacity over fees and returns, treated less as ideology than as basic housekeeping.

The floor's top Yes case captured that mood exactly, arguing "I don't see this as a left/right issue... invest smarter, or be shut down and moved onto a better system. Obviously" — a framing that went essentially unopposed, with no comparably credited case against surfacing on the floor.

When voters strip a welfare question of its usual left-right charge, what's left, it seems, is just an argument about performance — and performance, this chamber decided overwhelmingly, should be published.