The Green Party won its first ever Westminster by-election victory in Gorton and Denton, after facing off competition from Labour and the Reform Party.
Hannah Spencer’s high-profile win has warranted a wider look at the Green Party’s policies, including in areas such as pensions.
The latest full manifesto from the Green Party was published during the last national general election campaign, in 2024.
In it, the party pledged, that if they were to become the party of government, non-bank financial institutions, such as UK pension funds, would be mandated to remove fossil fuel assets from their investment portfolios, securities transactions and balance sheets by 2030.
Within higher education, the manifesto promised that elected Greens will work with the higher education sector to tackle the challenges posed by changes to employer contributions for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme.
Employer contributions for the Teachers’ Pension Scheme in England and Wales increased from 23.68% to 28.68% from April 2024.
The Green Party would also equate the rate of pension tax relief with the basic rate of income tax, so everybody would only get a tax relief of 20%. This move is intended to help fund the social care that will “allow elderly and disabled people on low incomes to live in dignity.”
In terms of State Pension, the manifesto also promised to ensure that pensions are always uprated in line with inflation and keep pace with wage rises across the economy. However, it did not explicitly pledge to preserve the ‘triple lock’ on pensions first introduced in 2011 by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
Reform UK’s pensions policy have also come under scrutiny recently, as at a recent conference in Dover deputy leader Richard Tice spoke of transforming Local Government Pension Schemes into a sovereign wealth fund if the party is elected.
