Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what forecast he has made of when his Department's loan to meet the scheme implementation costs for the National Employment Savings Trust will be repaid; and what the process is for that repayment.

The exact amount of loan finance required to establish NEST and the length of the loan will ultimately depend on a range of factors including: NEST’s final costs; the nature and size of NEST’s membership and the revenue that this generates; and other macroeconomic factors. Once NEST’s revenues from charges exceed its annual running costs, it will begin to repay the capital loan. The European Commission’s decision on State aid for NEST noted a wide range of possible scenarios for the length of the loan ranging between 20 and 38 years.