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Pensions: Automatic Enrolment

I hear cries of "Too long" from a sedentary position. We have been in office longer than 20 minutes, but these are early days. However, I hope that the Minister and the department will understand that we need to take account of the urgency of this matter. The Government should restate their position as energetically and urgently as they can. They must demonstrate enthusiasm and demonstrate that they are up for this fight as it will be a struggle to win hearts and minds to make this policy successful. It is clear to me that we need to provide more flexibility for employers, and soon. We need to be able to access better information systems that explain the long-term benefits of this policy for employees and employers. We need to be able to do that in pretty short order if this policy is to succeed. In the longer term we need to look at the promise of an evaluation when the "steady state" is reached in 2016. It is a shame that this has slipped back. I understand the reasons why the previous Administration slipped back the timescale slightly. I supported that as the original timescale presented many challenges. However, we will now not have a fully functioning 8 per cent annual saving amount until 2016. That is a long time coming and people will suffer from being undersaved between now and then as a result. We also need new impact assessments of the cost provisions that accompanied the draft regulations. I do not think that the earlier cost assumptions were sufficiently realistic. There should be better information. The department should have done more work since the previous assumptions were published. It would give the industry confidence if the department undertook to set up a working group with it and other interested parties in order to engage with the deployment and implementation of this policy. That is important. This is a very important piece of legislation that we must get right. There is a case in the even longer term for the Government to think about creating an independent body to formulate strategy for long-term savings. It should be broadly drawn, because it is important to try to develop and enforce a consensus in this important policy area. It is too important to get wrong. I hope that today’s debate will help to shed some light on the Government’s thinking. That was the purpose of tabling the Motion in the first place. I look forward to contributions from colleagues and others. I beg to move.