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Pensions Bill

I thank my noble friend for this amendment and as ever, the challenge that comes with it. I say to my noble friend Lady Dean that the Government see this as an issue about how people on low pay, particularly women, can be best supported and how the pension system might be made most relevant to them. Let me also deal upfront with this issue of multiple jobs. Sometimes we conflate a number of issues. Somebody can have multiple jobs because of seasonal work where the jobs are consecutive; you can have jobs that are concurrent or overlapping. They do not necessarily lead to the same result. Somebody who had a job for six months on £4,000 a year and a second job in a second part of the year for £4,000 would have, in broad terms, the same outcome as a person with a job paying £8,000 a year. It depends on pay reference periods; it depends on fluctuating earnings; it depends on whether there are waiting times for any of the schemes involved. We need to unpick that issue as well. Similarly, somebody might be on low but bunched earnings—they would earn £3,000 a year but would do so over a three or four-month period. Depending on the pay reference period of the employer, they would enter into an auto-enrolment situation. We need to unpick that. My noble friend gave me a particular challenge. My briefing is based on the assumption that those people who opted in, because they did not have qualified earnings, would bring with them an employer contribution. The proposition that I believe is being advanced is that those who have qualifying earnings are in, but choose to pay contributions on the first £5,000 and not just on the band of earnings. That should attract an employer contribution. Will my noble friend clarify that for me? Obviously, different issues arise from that. Is my noble friend saying that those people who do not reach the qualifying earnings threshold, but who have a right to opt in, can also, when they opt in, have a right to bring with them an employer contribution; or is my noble friend saying that if you have qualifying earnings above the threshold, contributions should be payable by the employer, not only in respect of that excess but from £0?