‘Ban pensions cold-calling next year to stop scammers’

PENSIONS cold calling must be banned next year to prevent people being “avoidably conned out of their life savings”, a committee of MPS has said.

The work and pensions select committee has urged the Government to fast-track an existing plan to ban the practice and also to do more to ensure that people are given guidance before they decide to access their pension pot.

The committee said the risks have increased since the pensions were reformed in 2015 to give over-55s a wider range of choices over how they use the money they have saved.

The Government has vowed to ban pensions cold calling, but the committee has urged “urgent legislative action” to bring forward the crackdown. Ministers recently unveiled the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, which would bring about the ban.

But the committee believes the draft legislation is flawed because it ties outlawing the calls to the creation of a new financial guidance body, which could delay its implementation until 2020.

The committee wants an enforceable ban to be introduced by June 2018 and is proposing changing the Bill.

Frank Field, the chairman of the committee, said pensions are “rich pickings” for scammers offering overthe-top returns and seemingly clever advice. He said: “Every day that passes without a ban, people are being avoidably conned out of their life savings. The Government should use the Bill that has just arrived in the Commons to legislate to protect pensions now.”

The Committee said the problem of people being pushed towards “completely legal but totally inappropriate” investments which fall short of fraud needed to be tackled.

A Treasury spokeswoman said: “We’re bringing forward legislation to ban pensions cold calling, tightening HM Revenue and Customs rules to stop pensions scammers and fraudulent schemes, and preventing the transfer of money from occupational pension schemes into fraudulent ones.”