The Pensions Protection Fund (PPF) has praised The Pensions Regulator and supports measures to give it stronger powers.

In its written evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, as part of its review into the defined benefit white paper, the PPF said that the regulator's current approach has led to “significant changes” of attitudes within the industry, without changes to the existing legislative framework.

Last month, the committee blasted TPR over its “hollow” approach to protecting Carillion’s pension schemes, and said it was “far from convinced” that its current leadership can effect change.

TPR CEO Lesley Titcomb announced last week that she would not be extending her tenure at the regulator, and is to step down in February 2019.

Despite this, the PPF wrote: “In our view the ‘TPR Future’ programme and TPR’s “clearer, quicker, tougher” approach has already led to significant changes, including increased use of existing powers and changing attitudes within the wider industry.

“For example, we note TPR’s Section 72 powers have been successfully used in a number of cases in recent months.”

Furthermore, the PPF suggested giving the TPR more resources in order to strengthen its “information gathering powers”, ensuring trustees well informed of corporate transactions in good time so they can call the TPR when they become concerned.

The PPF wrote: “By incentivising others to bring cases of concern to TPR, rather than mandating TPR itself to sift through large volumes of corporate transactions, we think these measures could help ensure effective action is taken on the right cases without requiring a disproportionate level of resources.”

Last month, TPR outlined its plans to be a “strong, agile, fair and efficient” regulator over the next three years, in a bid to gain the respect of employers, trustees and other stakeholders.

The PPF also supported the threat of punitive fines to incentives clearance applications and encourage employers to put greater levels of mitigation in place.

“Our expectation would be that they’d likely act as a powerful deterrent to potential avoidance and encourage proactive use of the voluntary clearance regime where appropriate”, it added.

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