Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will carry out an impact assessment on the freedom and choice pension reforms.

Government has already assessed, and continues to assess, the impact of the pension freedoms.

In advance of the introduction of the freedoms a Tax Information and Impact Note was published by HM Revenue and Customs. This is available on the Gov.uk website.

An impact assessment was also published for amendments to the 2015 Pension Schemes Act which covered transfers from private sector defined benefit schemes. This is available on the Parliament website.

Looking forward, HMRC publishes quarterly releases on flexible withdrawals from pensions, and the Financial Conduct Authority also produces regular bulletins on retirement income market data. My Department regularly meets with other government departments, non-departmental public bodies, regulators, think tanks and industry representative groups to consider how industry and individuals are responding to the freedoms.

The Government committed in its response to the Work and Pensions Select Committee in December 2015 to publish findings from the Pension Wise evaluation research in 2017. This work is now underway with Ipsos MORI and the early findings covering customer experiences of the service were published in October 2016 on the Gov.uk website. Further publications from this programme will follow in 2017 including a comparison between users of the service compared with non-users to identify the impact of the service on understanding of the new pension freedoms.