Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the total contributions into (1) defined contribution, (2) defined benefit, and (3) other, pension schemes for the past five years.

From October 2022, new requirements were introduced for schemes used for automatic enrolment to provide a simpler annual benefit statement. The Department continues to work with the Financial Conduct Authority and The Pensions Regulator to ensure compliance. Additionally, the Department plans to monitor/review the regulations within 5 years of being introduced as per the regulations (Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Disclosure of Information) (Statements of Benefits: Money Purchase Benefits) (Amendment) Regulations 2021)).

The Department publishes annual official statistics on workplace pension participation and saving trends. This provides estimates on the total amount saved into workplace pensions for those eligible for Automatic Enrolment, which was over £131bn in 2023. The table below holds the estimates of the total amount saved over the last 5 years, in 2023 earnings terms, which are also found in the official statistics noted above. As requested, the breakdowns by DB and DC schemes and other/unknown are also shown.

Notes: Estimates of amounts saved into workplace pensions are derived from ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) data. The saving attributed to ‘other/unknown’ is a result of respondents answering ‘unknown’ or failing to answer when asking what their workplace pension scheme type was, despite reporting a positive value of pension saving.