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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, to my mind there are two reasons why Amendment 16, tabled by my noble friend Lady Hollis, is attractive. First, it would enable people outside the lower limit on the band of earnings who want to save to be able to. Those of us who followed the debate know that a reason for the lower limit on the band of earnings, as distinct from the earnings trigger that is now proposed, was the consideration of the persistently very low-paid workers and whether it was appropriate for them to be nudged. However, as my noble friend said, this amendment is not auto-enrolling. It allows for the active choice of the worker—an active decision of someone on low earnings for a particular job. If they choose positively to make that decision, there seems to be a good and fair reason for the employer to make a matching contribution of 3 per cent, particularly because their incomes are low. The individual would still be a worker and the 3 per cent employer contribution would also assist with the arguments about de minimis levels of contribution and the consequential impact on costs and charges. My second reason for finding this amendment attractive is that it extends the principle that the reforms should work for women because, although women are most likely to have earnings below the qualifying band, their household income may be such that they still want to make a pension contribution. That is very important. I declare an interest because of my involvement with NEST. NEST is designed to allow someone voluntarily to contribute once they have a NEST account, although I acknowledge that there are de minimis requirements because of the need to keep costs and charges low. However, I am sure that in most instances the combination of the employer contribution and the employee contribution would go above those de minimis requirements. It could also start to address the multi-job problem where women have several mini-jobs, because individual contributions per job look low but in aggregate could be much greater. Although I fear that many women in such mini-jobs will not have the confidence to overcome the barriers of inertia and voluntarily opt in—their needs will require more systemic change, as we discussed yesterday—none the less there will be women who will want to make the active choice and who will be in circumstances where that makes economic sense and where it will assist the asset accumulation for a pension in their own name. So the proposal certainly has attractions.