Written Evidence to be reported to the House.
Pensions Bill
9:30 am
Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
Thank you, Sir Nicholas. Let me welcome you back to the Chair and immediately express my hon. Friends’ sympathy and condolences to the Minister. His is a sad loss and I am sure the whole Committee would share these sentiments.
I am pleased to see this series of Government amendments to the Bill. They are a useful addition and we support enabling workers earning less than £5,035 with any one employer to contribute to personal accounts. I note that the Minister said that the employer will have the option to pay voluntary contributions and that some employers currently do that. In a competitive marketplace, employers may need to consider that in order to get the people they want to work for them. So the addition is absolutely excellent. Concern has been expressed that lower-paid workers would be losing out and this gives them at least the option to joint the personal accounts scheme. Let us hope that many of them will choose to do so and will then receive the full contribution from their employers to which they will be entitled as and when, hopefully, they go on to earn more than £5,035.
I would be grateful if the Minister addressed one question. The explanatory note to amendment No. 123 talks about the provision of information to workers without qualifying earnings. We are debating the area of information in advance of the Thoresen review and are therefore somewhat in the dark, but I presume that that information will need to be slightly different, given that the employer’s contribution will not be there as of right and that that may therefore affect the considerations of lower-paid employees as to whether they have personal accounts. Will part of the generic financial advice that jobholders receive relate specifically to workers earning less than the lower qualifying earnings limit?