Former Pensions Minister Baroness Ros Altmann has criticised the government for the “snail’s pace” of progress on the long-awaited Pensions Dashboard.

The criticism follows news this week that the Pensions Dashboard would not be ready until 2023 at the earliest.

She wants to see an acceleration of work on the dashboard, particularly on data reconciliation and standard statements.

Baroness Altmann also says that the so-called ‘stronger nudge’ planned to encourage DC pension scheme members to take guidance is a “weak measure” as it lacks auto-enrolment into guidance.

She said: “The PensionWise ‘nudge’ won’t be a game-changer, auto-enrolment is needed to protect more people against scams.”

Overall she says there is a “disappointingly slow pace of change for pensions.”

She said: “ I must admit to being disappointed at the slow pace of change and fear that increasing numbers of people will be at risk of losing their pensions to fraudsters, especially during the current Covid crisis.

“Promises of a Pensions Dashboard for 2020 have been dashed. The Dashboard Delivery Project has released a new timeline which suggests only a ‘first version of data standards’ and specification of digital architecture will be ready this year.

“The project is still working on challenges of data security, identity verification and matching people with their pensions. In 2021, service standards and design will be developed with chosen suppliers and only in 2022 will the first volunteer pension providers be connected to any system. Compulsion on schemes to connect to the ‘dashboards ecosystem’ is not slated till after 2023.

She said five years after the Pensions Dashboard were first promised this is “not good enough.”

Pensions Dashboards will give pension savers all their pension information in one place.

She said one of main problems appeared to be that pension data “is not in a fit state to be loaded onto a dashboard and that schemes still need at least two years to prepare.”

On pension guidance she said the DWP seems reluctant to ensure significantly improved take-up of the “excellent” government-funded PensionWise guidance service.

She said: “Telling people about PensionWise does not do enough and leaves hundreds of thousands of people on their own, at the mercy of fraudsters and having to cope with complex pension decisions without knowing the risks.”

She wants to see auto-enrolment into guidance to provide a significant boost to customer protection as Pension Wise take up is currently “extremely low” in her view.