Draft Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2017

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 General Committees

[The Chair]

I call the Minister to move the motion.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions (Richard Harrington)]

Formally.

[The Chair]

The Minister may move the motion and then make a speech accordingly, but if he moves it formally, I will invite the Opposition to speak.

[Richard Harrington]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2017.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. For the clarity of the record, I did not mean moving the motion formally in the parliamentary sense; I meant doing so in a formal manner, which means being properly dressed and addressing the Chair properly. I hope that I have dealt with that issue satisfactorily.

The order was laid before the House on 2 February 2017. It reflects the conclusions of this year’s annual review of the automatic enrolment earnings thresholds required under the Pensions Act 2008. The review considered both the automatic enrolment earnings trigger, which determines the point when someone becomes eligible to be automatically enrolled in one of the qualifying workplace pensions, and the qualifying earnings band, which determines those earnings of which the enrolled employee and their employer must pay a proportion into a workplace pension. The order sets a new lower and upper limit for the qualifying earnings band, and is effective from 6 April 2017. The earnings trigger is not changed, so no further provision is required in the order; it remains at the level set in the automatic enrolment threshold review order for 2014-15.

The automatic enrolment programme has received support from right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. It was implemented under the previous Labour Government and came about as a result of the Pensions Commission, which was a successful and, I think it is fair to say, non-political body. The programme is working. More than 7 million people have already been enrolled and more than 400,000 employers have carried out their duty to provide a workplace pension for their employees. We are now in the final year of roll-out, which I think is the most challenging phase, because the majority of the employers joining are small and micro-employers. Against that backdrop, it is more important than ever to maintain simplicity and consistency for employers. That is the reason for this year’s order, which will provide those things through to the end of roll-out in February 2018.

I am pleased to say that we are at an exciting juncture in the development of automatic enrolment, as my Department is embarking this year on a review of the policy and its operation. It is the right time to reflect on the successes we have achieved so far, and also to look to the future. We are taking stock of the current position and considering how to build on what has been done, so that AE continues its success into the future. I think we all look forward to the result of the 2017 review, but given that it has just begun, it is important that this year’s threshold decision does not pre-empt the outcome. Nevertheless, we must obviously continue the principle of increasing opportunity for people to make meaningful savings in a workplace pension, while balancing costs for employers.

I shall describe the impact of the order, and will first consider the qualifying earnings band. Past reviews have generally linked it to the national insurance lower and upper earnings limits, and I think that is common sense and has been uncontroversial. As signalled in my written statement of 12 December 2016, the order will, as its predecessors did, align both the lower and upper limits of the qualifying earnings band with the national insurance lower and upper earnings limits, so that the trigger is the same: £5,876 for the lower limit and £45,000 for the peak.

Maintaining the alignment with national insurance thresholds at the points where contributions start for low earners and are capped for higher earners—remembering that employers are the conduit to the pension—fits exactly to existing payroll systems, without further changes. The decision ensures simplicity and minimises the administrative burden of compliance for employers in 2017-18, while maintaining consistency for hundreds of thousands of small and micro-employers who are implementing AE over the coming year. It is done in the way they expect it to be done, and there is consistency.

The order does not change the earnings trigger, which remains at £10,000, as set in the 2014-15 order. The maintenance of that trigger and anticipated wage growth mean that we expect about 70,000 additional individuals to now meet the earnings criteria and be brought into the automatic enrolment population. Individuals earning below the £10,000 trigger, but above the lower earnings threshold, can still have the option to opt-in to a workplace pension and benefit from their employer’s contributions, should they wish. The decision to maintain the earnings trigger at £10,000 will increase the number of low earners who meet the earnings criteria and who are therefore automatically enrolled into a workplace pension.

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Paragraph 7.4 of the explanatory notes says:

“The Secretary of State has re-considered all the review factors against the latest analytical evidence”.

Paragraph 18 of the impact assessment also says that

“the Secretary of State has re-considered all the review factors against the latest analytical evidence”.

To my mind, the impact assessment does not include that analytical evidence. Will the Minister tell us what that analytical evidence is and where it be found?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

If the hon. Gentleman will have a little patience, I intend to cover that a little later in summing up. Perhaps he will intervene again, and if he is not satisfied, I will write to him with more detail. I hope that is okay; I am not fobbing him off.

The important thing to remember is that the decision to maintain the alignment of the lower and upper earnings qualifying bands with those for national insurance contributions is about maintaining simplicity and consistency for employers, because this is a crucial stage. It does not mean that that will not change in the future—that is what the review is for—but, for the moment, we feel that this is an interim arrangement, at the end of the roll-out, rather than at the beginning of the next phase, which I hope will happen, depending on the outcomes of the review.

In the end, because of wages going up, total pension saving—that is what everyone is interested in—is expected to increase by £71 million. The order therefore ensures that automatic enrolment will continue to provide greater access and opportunity for individuals to save in a workplace pension and build up meaningful pension savings. I commend the order to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I would like to respond in full to the hon. Member for Stockton North. I accept that some of the matters that he and I discuss regularly in the main Chamber are really meant for outside this room. I will confine my comments on his speech to the fact that all the points he has made about multiple jobs and getting self-employed workers involved in auto-enrolment are very much on our radar for the review. I look forward to sharing with him publicly and in our conversations what we have in mind.

The Government are committed to expanding the number of people in the auto-enrolment system. Having said that, I think the right decision was taken when it started to keep it as simple as possible because, in a British way, it was quite a revolution. It was a complete change. At the start it was a compulsory workplace pension, and a lot has been achieved by the National Employment Savings Trust, other pension providers and the Government, with strong political support from all concerned. That does not mean that this is the end of the story. If I may attempt to be a little Churchillian, I would say that it is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end—or vice versa; I am never quite sure which order to put it in, but that is what it is. With that in mind, I will confine my comments on the hon. Gentleman’s speech, given your guidance on the scope of the order, Mr Hanson—that also gives me an excuse not to mention the Women Against State Pension Inequality demonstration today.

In response to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West, I do have the supporting analysis for the review, in “Review of the automatic enrolment earnings trigger and qualifying earnings band for 2017/18: supporting analysis”. Rather than take the time of the Committee, I will hand it to him, if that is acceptable. It is a comprehensive analysis, and if the hon. Gentleman wishes to take it up further with me, he is welcome to do so.

[Rob Marris]

I am grateful for the Minister’s generous offer, which I accept. Perhaps he could give the Committee the edited highlights of that evidence.

[Richard Harrington]

The edited highlights are that there was a full analysis that supports the earnings trigger.

The order increases the qualifying earnings limit in line with national insurance to a £5,876 minimum and an upper earnings limit of £45,000. It maintains the status quo for the system of organising the limits. The earnings trigger, at £10,000, remains at its existing level. I know that I have said this several times, but I would ask hon. Members to be aware that that is because we are doing a review. The Government’s intention is to do the opposite of trying to reduce the number of people who are brought within auto-enrolment.

As for the figure that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West mentioned—this marginal amount—there is a calculator that worked out the amount of money, and I intend to write to him on that basis. He will remember that the minimum to start is 1% for the employer and 1% for the employee. If someone had been brought in at £10,000, remembering that £5,000-and-whatever is the minimum, then I can see a number in my head—obviously quite a crude number, because I have not worked out exactly where that could come from—but this is the very beginning. If someone has a small part-time job in their early twenties and has not gone into full-time employment, then I can see that, but of course they are not going to work for 50,000 years. The whole purpose of auto-enrolment is to get people thinking about their savings, to get employers involved, to show the Government’s part with tax relief, and to ensure that, with their state pension and workplace pension, they have enough money for a comfortable retirement.

I believe that I have covered most of the points raised about the order. I thank the Opposition and other hon. Members for their contributions. I do not want to pre-empt the 2017 review. Enough people are involved from the pensions world, the consumer world, the trade union movement and business. A very wide group of people are taking part, not just a few civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions. I hope that I have set out for the Committee the need for the order and responded to the matters raised, albeit briefly, for reasons I have explained.

Question put and agreed to.