MPs are calling for a single pensions regulator to be established to protect consumers when they are able to cash in their pots from next month.
The Work and Pensions Committee said in a new report that people need help to make the “right decisions” when they are granted the freedom to not buy an annuity with their pension pot.
Dame Anne Begg, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said: “Savers need to be properly protected from being ripped off in frauds or scams, or suffering financial loss from making the wrong decision about how to use their pension pots.”
But George Osborne has hit back at criticism of his plans in an opinion piece for The Sun. “To those Labour politicians who say savers can’t be trusted to look after their own money I say this is patronising nonsense,” he writes.
Former DWP Secretary Lord Hutton has told the same newspaper that the UK had “lost the savings habit” and that the state would struggle to afford pensions by the 2040s.