Pensions

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 4th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman) [V]]

I beg to move,

That the draft Automatic Enrolment (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020, which was laid before this House on 16 March, be approved.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this we shall take the following motion:

That the draft Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Automatic Enrolment) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 16 March, be approved.

The Minister is asked to speak for no more than 20 minutes

[Guy Opperman]

I am pleased to introduce these instruments, which follow the statement that I laid before the House on 16 March. It is an honour to address the House remotely, and to be the first Member of Parliament for Hexham to do so. I hope that it is also the last time I do so, and that we can get back to business as usual and to the Parliament that we had before.

Before I turn to the substance of the instruments, Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that you will indulge me briefly while I comment on some of the matters before us. We have a situation in which 25% of the working population are furloughed, with their wages paid for by the Government, and the Department for Work and Pensions is undertaking the Herculean task of taking well over 1 million people on to universal credit. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is also Star Wars Day. While I am absolutely certain that the force is with you, I hope that the force is also with my broadband provider. If it fails, I can assure you that I will not blame the Government.

It is an honour to be a Minister at the DWP and to be the first to move regulations in this way. In her statement earlier, the Secretary of State rightly thanked our fantastic workforce, who have worked day and night to ensure that all the DWP’s services are provided in a professional and competent manner. I should like to put on the record my thanks to all the staff who work at the DWP, including those in jobcentres up and down the country, such as Hexham jobcentre in my constituency.

I also thank everybody at Team Pensions, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that covid-19 does not adversely impact local and national populations. In particular, we have cancelled the pension levy increase, help has been given to defined contribution and defined benefit providers, and we continue to try to stop the public being scammed. Finally, I thank my team in Hexham, led by James McArdle, and my team at the DWP, led by Lauren Thomas.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are aware of the importance of automatic enrolment in all our constituencies, and these instruments are important. Automatic enrolment is one of the great cross-party success stories. Conceived under a Labour Government, formulated and brought forward under the coalition, and expanded under a Conservative Government, it is one of the finest public policy successes in the last generation. We now have 10 million plus people who have been automatically enrolled on to an occupational pension; automatic enrolment has transformed workplace savings. They are now saving 8% per annum on an ongoing basis, which simply was not the case previously.

The instruments will implement the conclusions of the 2018 statutory review. The review concluded that automatic enrolment into workplace pensions should continue for eligible employees in the maritime industries, ensuring their access to a pension in the same way as workers in the rest of the UK economy. Subject to the approval of the House, the instruments will remove the sunset clauses contained in the original 2012 legislation so that it continues in force beyond the current expiry date of 1 July 2020. The business of the Government goes on notwithstanding the impacts of covid-19. We will overcome this pandemic, we are Great Britain. I commend these regulations to the House.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I ask the shadow Minister not to speak for longer than 15 minutes.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Following on from what the Pensions Minister said, our country is gripped by the greatest crisis since 1945, and in the great battle to save jobs and livelihoods I too have nothing but praise for the DWP staff, who, together with key and essential workers throughout our country, have been utterly magnificent in rising to the challenge of protecting the public and the public interest. We will come through this, not least because in an hour of darkness what we saw was our staff, the very best of Britain, rising to the challenge, putting themselves on the line to support others, sometimes in desperate difficulty and occasionally putting themselves in harm’s way, to do the job they are determined to do. They deserve nothing but our warmest praise.

The Pensions Minister has heard me say before that auto-enrolment, introduced by the last Labour Government, was a landmark achievement. It is deeply welcome that there has been a continuity of policy, as a consequence of which 10.2 million people are now saving £90 billion a year via auto-enrolment. We are seeing extraordinary benefits: for example, 77% of people are now engaged in a workplace pension. It was a dream that we would ever make such progress in years gone by; it was a vision that we gave birth to and carried forward. I stress once again that I welcome the continuity of policy on the part of the Government.

There is undoubtedly room for improvement with auto-enrolment; 8% cannot be the summit of our ambition —the £10,000 threshold and the age of 22 threshold likewise. There are improvements that require to be made at the next stages, including tackling the deep-seated problems for the self-employed. Having said that, it is absolutely right that we celebrate the progress made thus far.

Turning to the statutory instruments, we must constantly broaden the scope of auto-enrolment to take in yet more workers on the one hand and ensure that nobody falls out on the other. To that end, these statutory instruments are necessary; otherwise, the interests of maritime workers and seafarers would be put at risk, and that cannot be right, not least because of the job that they do. The sunset clause that would otherwise have created real problems for continuity requires to be dealt with by way of these statutory instruments, and we are therefore pleased to endorse them and we will certainly not be voting against them.

Going forward to the next stages, in the spirit that the Pensions Minister referred to I say that we have monumental problems as a country and I am in no doubt whatsoever that there will be significant implications for pensions and future generations of pension earnings for years to come. But today these are necessary statutory instruments, which we are more than happy to support.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. There is a 10-minute limit on contributions and I hope contributors have timing devices so they do not go over that limit.