Government amendment No. 120 removes the restriction on jobholders that prevents them from opting in more than once every 12 months. Government  amendment No. 122 enables the jobholder to request access at any time to workplace pension saving with an employer contribution, but does not oblige the employer to act on more than one request every 12 months. Should the employer choose to accept an additional notice made within that period, he must enrol the jobholder in accordance with the prescribed opt-in enrolment process. This means that employees cannot be disruptive by playing hokey-cokey with the pensions system, opting in and opting out.

If someone has opted out, that person is entitled to opt back in at some point during the year. However, as the employer need not accede to an opt-in request more than once during the year, the employee can make such requests, but the employer does not have to act upon them more than once. This will work as follows. Once a year, the employer will accept employees opting in and, at that date, will opt in those who have requested to opt in. This is a fairly straightforward process, and the amendments clarify the situation in respect of the way in which employers would be able to operate.

Amendment No. 70 seeks to prescribe the process by which a jobholder is able to trigger an opt-in, and obliges notice to be given in a particular form, signed by the jobholder, with particular information being provided. My reason for opposing this is not that I particularly object to the provision proposed by the amendment, but that I would rather this be done in regulations after we have consulted with the employers’ organisations and have had a further opportunity to look at how this process will work in detail.

The terms of a particular form are, I think, better dealt with in that way, unless it is a form of great substance, as in the case of the Police Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The way in which a form is laid out may change from time to time, and I think it is much better to deal with it in regulations, rather than trying to put it in the Bill. I have no great objection in principle to what amendment No. 70 seeks to do: I just think these issues are better dealt with elsewhere, and we will come to deal with them in terms of the way in which various forms might be dealt with—I think that is in clause 8, “Information to be given to jobholders”.