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Pensions Bill

Early in the consideration of the Bill I picked up some concerns from employers about the complexity of the provision to exempt them from having to enrol in this form of personal accounts. We kept it very simple. Essentially, they must have a provision that matches personal accounts and makes a minimum 3 per cent. employer contribution, with a 4 per cent. contribution from the employee. The exemption is very straightforward, and they should be able to identify whether they may be exempt. Certainly, the pension providers who provide the pension to employers should be able to say immediately whether their scheme is exempt. It will not apply to some schemes because the contribution levels are too low, and we have been clear that we want to increase those contribution levels where that is the case. By and large, I have not picked up any recent concerns. The CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and others have been broadly supportive of the way in which we have undertaken this. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare seems to be flashing some document at me. If it is from an organisation, I have met most of the organisations concerned and we have had broad support for the Bill as a whole, although there are specific concerns. We have tried to keep the issue of exemption as simple and straightforward as possible. We are conscious that the Bill will apply to small-scale employers such as the chippie down the road or the hairdresser round the corner, who may employ just a couple of people, and we wanted to ensure that the provisions were not so complex that they would have to do an awful lot of reading or examination of the issues. Concerns have been expressed to me about one problem that we will no doubt come to later on—how earnings are calculated. That can get quite complicated, but we are looking into technology to try to deal with that for some of the smaller-scale employers. These specific exemptions are included in the Bill primarily because they deal with public sector employees who have their own particular provisions. On that basis, they are justified and I hope that the House will support them.