Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many (1) convictions, and (2) criminal penalties, there were for pension scams in each year since 2010.

Due to the nature of fraud, it can be committed in a variety of ways against organisations and individuals.  As such, we do not hold a record of all regulators that may be involved with the criminal prosecution of fraud.  The Government set out its plans for tackling fraud in the joint public and private sector Economic Crime Plan (2019-22), which was published in July 2019. Further information, including a list of organisations involved in the development of it, can be found here: Economic Crime Plan, 2019 to 2022, accessible version - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The number of convictions involving pension scams is not centrally held in the court proceedings database as this specific offence is not separately identified in legislation. Identifying this offence separately would require a manual search of court records, incurring disproportionate costs.

The Ministry of Justice has published information on prosecutions, convictions and outcomes for fraud offences, that will include pensions scams, amongst other offences.

The numbers of prosecutions, convictions and outcomes for fraud offences have been provided in the attached table. These figures were taken from the following published data tool:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/987715/outcomes-by-offence-2020.xlsx

The Court Proceedings database does not include the responsible regulatory body bringing the prosecution.