State Retirement Pensions
Work and Pensions

David Willetts (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education; Havant, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the total volume of deficit repair contributions made in each of the last five years.

James Purnell (Minister of State (Pensions Reform), Department for Work and Pensions; Stalybridge and Hyde, Labour)

The PPF collects information on deficit reduction payments made by schemes in order to reduce the amount of risk-based levy they are liable to pay. As the PPF has only been in operation since April 2005, information on such deficit reduction payments is not available for each of the last five years.

Such information as is available was published in the Purple Book (http://www.ppf.gov.uk/the_purple_book _ppf-tpr.pdf)

"Schemes in the sample had certified approximately £9.8bn of special contributions to reduce deficits by 7 April 2006. These contributions were certified to the Pension Protection Fund for the purpose of enabling a more up-to-date assessment to be made of the scheme funding position, with the extra contributions increasing the scheme assets and so reducing the risk-based levy."

Figures for deficit reduction payments in 2006-07 are not yet available.