02 December 2025
10 min
Please see excerpts below from this month's Current Issues. Click here to read the full publication.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, delivered a much anticipated/dreaded Budget speech on 26 November 2025. From a pensions-focused perspective, the big news was the partial negation of the National Insurance advantages of making employee pensions contributions by salary sacrifice, but there were also notable announcements on PPF indexation, inheritance tax on pension death benefits, and DB-surplus distributions.
The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has begun the process of consultation on the levy rules for 2026/27. Provided that measures in the Pensions Schemes Bill look set to pass before the end of the financial year, it doesn't plan to impose levies on conventional schemes. If timely passage of the levy measures looks uncertain, the PPF will revert to its 2025/26 levy rules—which would still give it the option of reducing levy invoices to nothing if sufficient progress is made on the Bill.
The Pension Schemes Bill is set to have its report and third reading stages in the House of Commons on 3 December 2025. After that, it'll go on to the House of Lords.
The Pensions Regulator has published details of this year's defined-benefit (DB) and hybrid scheme return. It's asking for more information on contingency planning for leveraged liability-driven investment (LDI) arrangements, and a more-detailed analysis of unquoted- and private-equity assets from the largest ('Tier 3') schemes.
The Court of Appeal has upheld rulings denying corporation-tax deductions to two companies, in respect of accounting provisions that they made for future pension liabilities from an unfunded, unapproved retirement benefit scheme (UURBS). The Court agreed that the Upper Tribunal (UT), and before that the First-tier Tribunal (FTT), had been entitled to conclude that the unfunded arrangements were not 'incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade', because each companies' primary goal was to reduce its tax liability without incurring actual expenditure.
A recent High Court judgement explores the viability of changes made to a scheme with a fetter on its power of amendment.
The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government has published consultation drafts of two statutory instruments that would amend the rules of the Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales. The proposed changes are designed to implement asset-pooling, local-investment and governance reforms that will be enabled (in part) by the Pension Schemes Bill that is currently being debated by Parliament. The consultation period runs from 20 November 2025 to 2 January 2026.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Pat McFadden, announced in a written statement to Parliament that the Government will reassess the case for compensating those adversely affected by poor communication of the equalisation of women's State pensionable ages (SPA) with those of men. McFadden cautioned that 'retaking this decision should not be taken as an indication that Government will necessarily decide that it should award financial redress.'
Pension Schemes Newsletter 175 from His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) summarises and adds some details to the pensions announcements in this year’s Budget.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please get in touch.
This communication has been compiled by Hymans Robertson LLP® (HR) as a general information summary and is based on its understanding of events as at the date of publication, which may be subject to change. It is not to be relied upon for investment or financial decisions and is not a substitute for professional advice (including for legal, investment or tax advice) on specific circumstances. HR accepts no liability for errors or omissions or reliance on any statement or opinion. Where we have relied upon data provided by third parties, reasonable care has been taken to assess its accuracy however we provide no guarantee and accept no liability in respect of any errors made by any third party.
Current issues is our comprehensive roundup of the latest news and trends in pensions, investments, trusteeship and scheme management.
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