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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, this amendment is about voluntary earnings. Who do we think NEST is for? It is basically for poorer people, mostly women, who are not able to save in conventional ways and have hitherto had no access to an occupational pension. The other two members of the Paul Johnson review team that produced the report Making Automatic Enrolment Work are very experienced people, but they come from the industry and employment side. Their report recommends that auto-enrolment begins not at the LEL of £5,204 but at the earnings threshold of just under £7,500. This means that 1 million people, mostly women, who would have been automatically enrolled will now not be. The expectation is that ET will rise potentially to £10,000, at which point 2 million people, mostly women, will not be automatically enrolled. The report runs two arguments in favour of raising the threshold. I think that both of them are fallacious. The first argument that the report runs is that—it is, of course, true—very low earners have high replacement rates in retirement through benefits and so on, so that NEST is not necessary, unlike for higher earners, for whom state benefits by definition represent a lower replacement rate and who might therefore wish to take advantage of NEST. The second argument that the report runs—as you would expect from the industry—is that they do not want to handle such small sums. That is the basis of their argument and the Government have followed their advice. The first of these is about replacement earnings. It is, of course, true that, if you have a low enough income from earned work, even the basic state pension backed by pension credit will come to much the same level as your wage and therefore you will have a high replacement rate. The statistics and percentages on this are all very well, but these women are still very poor. That is why their state benefits in retirement will perhaps just about equal their wage. They are still very poor, whether in work or in retirement. A pension, however small, even if it is below the trivial commutation level, which it probably will be, gives the woman, through pension savings, a two for one to match her own—because she attracts the employer’s contribution and, to a minor degree, the tax relief, depending on where she is earning—which, perhaps for the first time, might allow her to retire with a small capital sum below the trigger commutation rate of perhaps £10,000 or £15,000, depending on how long she has saved. I do not accept this argument. It is right that there are high replacement earnings in retirement, if you have a very low wage. However, that means that—this is the key fact behind it—both in work and in retirement you are likely be very poor indeed. This is why we need an option for NEST. The industry’s second argument, which I also think is fallacious, although I understand it, is that employers do not want the hassle of handling small sums that, they say, would not be worth much to the employee once the means-tested benefits come into play. However, there is a profound flaw in their argument here, too. The reason why the sums are small is that, wherever you set the auto-enrolment start line, whether it is LEL at £5,200 or ET at £7,400, the first £1,000 or £2,000 of earnings above any line that you set will by definition produce only a very modest increment in pension. That would be true whether you were on £10,000, £15,000, £20,000 or £22,000. The first £2,000 produces little additional revenue. That is why, while the argument is true that you might as well put it up to £7,500 because the difference between £5,200 and £7,500 is tiny, it is also the case for the first £2,000 of earnings above £7,500. It is true for wherever you set the threshold, so it does not apply to the figure of £5,200 as such; it applies to the fact that you have a threshold at all, which is not based on the first zero pound. The whole of the report is fallacious, in so far as it hinges on that argument. Otherwise, if the woman is auto-enrolled at £5,200 with earnings of £7,400, her pot over 25 years, I estimate, with a levy on the £2,000 increment, will be about £10,000 greater than if she was enrolled in £7,400. But if she is enrolled at £7,400, and has earnings of £2,000 above that—say £9,400 or £9,500—she will still have the same size pot on the first £2,000 or so of income, give or take £100 or £200. The additional pot argument, in other words, applies wherever you pitch the threshold—unless, of course, you are up in the £30,000 or £40,000 region, where by definition you have a much higher increment. Therefore, the argument that the pots are too small to be worth bothering about either is valid for wherever you set the threshold for low earners or is not valid at all. The problem is not whether it starts at the LEL of £5,200 or at the ET at £7,400; it is that it does not cover the earnings below the threshold—the first £5,200 or £7,400. Auto-enrolment on those would make the difference that matters. That is what this amendment is about. I am pleased that the Government have agreed that, following the Johnson report, wherever a woman wishes voluntarily to enrol between the LEL of £5,200 and the ET at £7,500, the employer must contribute. As I have suggested, although that is useful, it is not enough to make a really significant difference unless it is extended to embrace the whole of the earnings from pound zero. My amendment adduces no new principle. The Government have already agreed—unless they have changed their mind and I have not picked that up—that young people below the age of 22 can voluntarily enrol. I welcome this. The Government have also agreed—I also welcome this as a concession following the report—that low earners earning between LEL and ET can also voluntarily enrol before they hit the auto-enrolment figure of £7,500. This amendment would allow the earner voluntarily to enrol on all her earnings from pound zero, provided that she was at or above the threshold—a threshold that I would like to be the LEL for the sake of consistency. Therefore, no new principle is involved in this amendment. It would merely bring into NEST those employees who, if they were in a standard occupational pension, would have their earnings covered from pound zero. It would merely align NEST with best practice already in occupational pension schemes—nothing new or novel. Only NEST has the LEL threshold for voluntary entry at £5,200 and ET at £7,500 for auto-entry. What does all this mean? Take a woman on half average earnings—say £11,000 a year. Only in NEST would a third of her earnings, between £7,500 and £11,000, be automatically pensioned. If she were in an OP, her entire earnings would be automatically pensioned. I emphasise that it would be voluntary for her to make the choice as to whether she welcomes and wants this form of savings going back to pound zero, given her family circumstances. Why is it necessary? Some 40 per cent of women at retirement may not be married; they may be cohabiting and they may or may not be financially interdependent with their partner. As a result, they need to carry their own pension. I am sure that the Minister and everyone in this Room would agree with me on that. As is stands, only a third of her income would be automatically pensioned. Should ET rise to £10,000 and she is on earnings of £11,000, almost none of her earnings—a paltry £1,000—would be pensioned unless she chose voluntarily to go back down to the LEL. Not surprisingly, this would result in the small sums which the industry finds a hassle and the employee finds disappointing and which trap employees into benefit tapers. I will repeat the statistics that I offered at Second Reading. Under these proposals, a woman has the right to enrol voluntarily below the LEL, so a woman on £11,000 after 25 years who voluntarily saved on all her earnings could end up with a pension pot of £40,000 over 25 years. If she relied on auto-enrolment and it were to kick in with an ET of £10,000, which is what the Pensions Minister, the honourable Steve Webb, is promising us, she would retire with a pot of virtually nothing. So the difference is between £40,000 or £1,000 or £2,000. This amendment adduces no new principle. It is about voluntary enrolment in which the employer must contribute. That principle has already been established for young people and for the gap between LEL and ET. There would be no additional small pots. On the contrary, it could well double the pots and more, to the gain of all parties concerned, and make it worth saving, which is what we all want. I beg to move.