§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham)My honourable friend the Minister of State for Pensions (Malcolm Wicks) has made the following Written Statement.
We are aware that trustees of schemes whose sponsoring employers are currently in financial difficulty are uncertain as to whether they would be able to be considered for PPF compensation once the PPF is launched next year.
The Government are now able to state that eligible schemes whose sponsoring employer has already entered insolvency proceedings may still be able to receive PPF compensation. The scheme will still have to satisfy other PPF eligibility criteria—in particular, the sponsoring employer will need to have an insolvency event after the introduction of the PPF and the pension scheme must not have commenced windup prior to that date.
The Pensions Bill provides a power that could be used to exclude schemes that have an insolvency event before the PPF is launched. We wish to make clear that we have no plans to use this power.