Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to encourage self-employed people to save towards their retirement.

The Government has a variety of policies that encourage self-employed retirement saving. Tax relief is provided on pension contributions, representing a significant incentive to save into a pension. As noted in DWP’s review of automatic enrolment in December, we are looking to build on the principles behind automatic enrolment’s success to help the self-employed save for retirement and DWP will be running tests of targeted interventions to help the self-employed save for retirement. As a first step, HM Treasury and DWP are co-hosting a ‘Tech Sprint’ event later this month with the ABI, working with industry and Fintech firms to develop innovative technology-based ideas to help the self-employed save for retirement.