I am pleased to announce that, yesterday, the NEST Corporation awarded the second stage of the scheme administration contract for the NEST pension scheme to Tata Consultancy Services.

This significant milestone for workplace pension reform follows my statement on 27 October, about the making automatic enrolment work review, and the decisions that were taken as part of the spending review.

The NEST pension scheme will be available to all employers who wish to use it and will ensure that employees currently without access to a good quality workplace pension scheme have the opportunity to save for their retirement.

NEST will be self-financing in the long term through the charges paid by its members. It will therefore be delivered at nil overall cost to taxpayers. Until charge revenues are sufficient to meet the full costs of the scheme, it will be funded through a loan from the Department to cover its initial set-up and operational costs.

The contract runs until June 2020 and includes a possible extension for up to a further five years.

On 2 March, the House was informed that the contract to deliver scheme administration services for NEST was being awarded to Tata Consultancy Services Ltd in two stages.