Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2016-04-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to protect people against fraud as they are automatically enrolled into a pension scheme, in the light of the recent cuts to the pensions watchdog.

Baroness Altmann

The resources allocated to the Pensions Regulator to cover its regulatory responsibilities, together with those for automatic enrolment compliance activity, increased by £3.4m to £79.5m for the financial year 2016/17.

Schemes that can be used by employers to meet their automatic enrolment duties are subject to specific quality requirements. The Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority both play an active role in monitoring schemes used for automatic enrolment to ensure that they meet these standards. The Pensions Regulator has also published a list of independently audited ‘master trusts’ pension schemes that employers may wish to use for automatic enrolment.

Both Regulators carry out targeted activity to investigate and mitigate risks, including indicators of possible fraud.