Company Pension Schemes

HC Deb 22 March 2004 vol 419 c567W

Mr. Drew

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many company pension schemes declared insolvent have been notified to his Department in the last three years. [162835]

Malcolm Wicks

This information is not available. The currently available source of information on pension schemes is the Pension Schemes Registry, which is administered by the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority (Opra). Their database does not allow us to identify the solvency position of the sponsoring company of a pension scheme.

We are exploring with industry representatives the basis on which we canestablish firm estimates of the number of defined benefit schemes which wind up because of insolvency.