Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of people who do not qualify to be auto-enrolled into a pension because their qualifying earnings are achieved by income from more than one job.

The Department’s estimate of this figure can be found in Workplace pensions: Update of analysis on Automatic Enrolment, DWP, available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/460867/workplace-pensions-update-analysis-auto-enrolment.pdf

Automatic enrolment was designed to help more people save for their retirement, including lower earners and those with more than one job. We want to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to save for retirement, and we have seen great success in this so far. However, we need to strike a balance between ensuring as many people as possible have access to saving, and administrative simplicity for employers.

Workers earning more than £10,000 a year (£192 a week) and aged between 22 and state pension age must be automatically enrolled by their employer. Workers who do not qualify for automatic enrolment and who are aged between 16 and 75 years can choose to opt-in to a workplace pension scheme; and if the worker earns more than £5,824 a year (£112 a week) they will be entitled to a mandatory contribution from their employer.