Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 6 June (HL Deb, col 626), on how many occasions since its inception has the Pensions Regulator used provisions for dawn raids, and how it determines the circumstances in which such provisions should be employed.

The Pensions Regulator has a power to request information which it exercises regularly and successfully. This means that it is often not necessary to use the powers under section 73 (inspection) or section 78 (warrants) of the Pensions Act 2004.

Under section 78, a justice of the peace may issue a warrant where there are reasonable grounds for believing that there are -

• relevant documents which would be removed, or made inaccessible, from the premises, or hidden, tampered with or destroyed,

or that

• an offence has been committed, or
• a person will do any act which constitutes a misuse or misappropriation of the assets of an occupational pension scheme or a personal pension scheme.

This power is only used in extreme circumstances, and such cases usually involve suspicions of wider criminal activity. Since 2004, the Regulator has used its powers to either inspect premises or issue a warrant on five occasions.