With this snappy title the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has today published a brief consultation document for what will probably be known as the Pickering Review of social security legislation governing UK pension schemes [first announced on 26 September 2001 - see also previous article on this exercise.

The main aim of the Review, stated by Alan Pickering in his covering letter, is to enable Ministers to strike a fair balance between regulatory effectiveness (in protecting the members) and administrative efficiency. As a starting point, eight key questions are posed in this consultation document:

• What areas of regulation do you regard as unnecessary? And why?
• Where do you think there is duplication?
• Which regulations are over prescriptive?
• What elements of regulation are inappropriately time consuming?
• What elements are particularly and unnecessarily expensive?
• Are there consumer interests that the current regulatory regime fails to address adequately? What are they?
• Which elements of the regulatory regime do schemes or employers, pension providers, consumers and others complain about most? In what sorts of numbers do these complaints arise?
• Are there areas of the regulatory regime which bear over-heavily on very small schemes? What are they?

Anticipating that most people would have something to say about these issues, the paper requests that to help the Consultation Team to handle responses, replies be organised under a number of generic headings, for example:

• The contracting out arrangements or any other aspects of the interface between the state and private elements of pension provision.
• Transfers and preservation.
• Disclosure of information.
• Rules relating to scheme administration.
• Rules introduced for social policy reasons which you think are outdated.