Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of implementing a training programme for pension and finance professionals to ensure they can more readily identify scam risks.

The Government is committed to working closely with industry, regulators and pension scheme providers to help identify and prevent scams, it is working with Project Bloom, the Pension Regulator led taskforce, to stop scams and co-ordinate action against offenders.

Through Project Bloom, DWP works with other government departments, regulators, enforcement agencies and the pensions industry to monitor the evolution of scam typology and respond with a collective and coordinated response. Project Bloom is examining the range of measures that all agencies including providers and financial professionals could take to help prevent scams.

DWP will consider with Project Bloom, industry and the regulators the feasibility of how a training programme could be developed. This would build on training individual providers already provide for their people.