Lord Freud corrected a written answer on Pensions

4 August 2016 · Lords written answer · Department for Work and Pensions

Lord Myners (Crossbench, Life peer) asked written question HL1186 on 13 July 2016. Lord Freud answered on 25 July 2016 for the Department for Work and Pensions, and Lord Freud corrected the answer on 4 August 2016. The correction replaced 2 figures (115 per cent, £22 billion) with 2 figures (116.3 per cent, £23 billion). Altogether 4 words differ between the two versions.

The question

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made an estimate of the cost of their monetary policy on the solvency of pension schemes, and whether they plan to use the profit made from quantitative easing to strengthen the financial position of the Pension Protection Fund.

Original and corrected answer

Struck through: original only. Bold: correction only.

Original	Corrected
The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England. Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy Committee. The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle. Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases" published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank's asset purchases, most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers and pensioners along with every other group in our society." The Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over ~~£22~~ billion assets under management and is ~~115~~ per cent funded.	The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England. Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy Committee. The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle. Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases" published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank's asset purchases, most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers and pensioners along with every other group in our society." The Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over £23 billion assets under management and is 116.3 per cent funded.

Original

Corrected

The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England. Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy Committee.
The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle.
Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases" published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank's asset purchases, most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers and pensioners along with every other group in our society."
The Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over ~~£22~~ billion assets under management and is ~~115~~ per cent funded.

The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England. Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy Committee.
The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle.
Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases" published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank's asset purchases, most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers and pensioners along with every other group in our society."
The Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over £23 billion assets under management and is 116.3 per cent funded.

The question and answer on the Parliament website.

Receipt

Read from	https://questions-statements-api.parliament.uk/api/writtenquestions/questions/535908?expandMember=true
Date read	15 October 2026
SHA-256	`1a8b740dab840424ecb68d658691766f0f1e6158aca83812a020936003e483f9`