The Benefit Fraud Investigation Service does not publish a separate annual report. The 2001-02 edition will be available shortly. The information is in the table. Includes all retirement pensioners resident in Great Britain and overseas. Numbers with a partial basic state pension exclude those pensioners who receive 100 per cent.
Figures are in thousands and rounded to the nearest hundred.
Based on a 5 per cent. Occupational pension schemes are required to have a two-stage internal dispute resolution procedure, which they must make known to members. Occupational schemes are not required to pay pension benefits before the normal pension age for the scheme. Some scheme rules do provide for pension benefits to be paid earlier for reasons such as ill-health. This is usually at the discretion of the scheme trustees and there is no legal requirement for them to provide reasons where they reject an ill-health pension application, although many schemes regard it as good administrative practice to do so.