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Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 7: 7: Clause 3, page 2, line 18, leave out paragraph (a) The noble Lord said: Clause 3 covers the nuts and bolts of automatic enrolment. We on these Benches totally agree with the premise—there should be no doubt about that. However, that does not mean that we do not have questions. Subsection (1) applies to workers from the age of 16 to retirement age, or what the Bill calls ““pensionable age””. Quite when that is is the subject of a later amendment. However, from the age of 16 to the day before his 22nd birthday, the employee can self-enrol in personal accounts or in his employer’s pension scheme, as long as the employer is permitted—““qualified”” is the technical word—although he does not have to. In that situation—in other words, before the employee’s 22nd birthday—the employer has the option to contribute under personal accounts. It is also an option, presumably, under personal and occupational pensions—it depends how the scheme is set up. I tabled Amendment No. 7 to explore what will happen when a young person who is already enrolled in a scheme hits the lower age limit of 22 and becomes eligible for auto-enrolment. It is not simple, but it seems to me that, if we are talking about personal accounts, that is the trigger for the employer to contribute, if he has not already been doing so. If we are talking about occupational or personal pensions, it is a different matter. The employee is already in the scheme and suddenly gets a notice saying, ““You need to auto-enrol””. Is that a sensible way of proceeding? I do not understand. In particular, I am interested in how auto-enrolment will be handled if, as I said, the young person is already participating in a qualifying pension scheme. We have listened over the past few weeks to numerous contributions from various outside bodies that offer high-quality pensions to their employees, many of whom are under 22 years old. I refer to one in particular. Tesco sponsors a pension involving auto-enrolment from the age of 21 and fully intends to make the necessary tweaks for it to qualify. It already targets literature explaining the advantages of its pension scheme at its younger employees, and has several members younger even than 21. How will the auto-enrolment plans that the Minister has described as being at the heart of the Bill work in this situation? I beg to move.