TUC welcomes abolition of short service refunds for workplace pensions

date: 23 April 2013

embargo: For immediate release

Responding to the government's announcement today (Tuesday) on small pension pots, TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said:

'We welcome the decision to bring forward the abolition of short service refunds. This is long overdue and has already damaged auto-enrolment.

'The TUC - along with the majority who responded to the government's consultation - favour an aggregator approach to consolidating small pots, as this provides the best safeguard against consumer detriment.

'But we welcome the minister's recognition of the risk of consumers losing out in a 'pot follows member' approach to small pots, and we look forward to further details on how they can be protected.

'In our view this can only be achieved by tougher regulation of DC pensions to ensure that they all have good governance, sensible defaults and low charges.'

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- The government's command paper on consolidating workplace pension savings is available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/automatic-transfers-consolidating-pension-savings

- All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

- Follow the TUC on Twitter: @tucnews

Contacts:

Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248 M: 07778 158175 E: media@tuc.org.uk
Rob Holdsworth T: 020 7467 1372 M: 07717 531150 E: rholdsworth@tuc.org.uk
Alex Rossiter T: 020 7467 1337 M: 07887 572130 E: arossiter@tuc.org.uk