Pensions Bill

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

It is hard to refute my hon. Friend’s argument. I suppose we must look at the position of those women together with the consequences of the reforms that the Secretary of State has authored to auto-enrolment—I know he will do that. One of the first decisions he took in the Pensions Act 2011 was to link the threshold for participation in auto-enrolment to the personal allowance. As the personal allowance has gone up, more and more low-paid people have fallen out of the auto-enrolment system. In 2011-12, 600,000 people fell out of auto-enrolment, and another 100,000 in 2012-12. In 2013-14, 420,000 people will fall out of the auto-enrolment system—1.1 million people have been carved out of that system.

This is an incredibly important part of the pensions saving architecture for the future, and I am extremely concerned that a number of low-paid people—more than 1 million, most of them women—have been shut out of the auto-enrolment system. To that mix we now say to 720,000 women who had the misfortune to be born between April 1951 and 1952, that they will not get the new system either.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman look at the work of the Work and Pensions Committee and its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill? We found in our evidence sessions that the situation was a great deal more complex for that group of women. They are by no means a homogenous group and some of the comparisons with men born on the same day are quite misleading. That came through in the evidence sessions, and I caution the right hon. Gentleman to look at the Committee’s report on the draft Bill.

[Mr Byrne]

I very much hope that the hon. Lady will be on the Bill Committee to ensure that such arguments are fully rehearsed. I am worried that an injustice is being perpetrated on these women, which is why it is incumbent on us all to search every possible option to help ensure that they can be included and not excluded, particularly in the context of changes to auto-enrolment that have moved 1.1 million people out of that future.