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Pensions Bill [HL]

I shall come to that question. There are around 1 million workers with annual earnings below £5,715. If these people were brought into pension saving, it could result in further employer contribution costs of up to £125 million. There is another issue that makes me urge caution on this amendment, although I appreciate that its intention is laudable. We cannot legislate to discriminate unreasonably between different groups. This proposal could well involve such discrimination because those who earn less than £5,000 would have an employer contribution on their full earnings if they opted in. However, those who earn £8,000 would have a contribution on only £3,000 of their earnings and not on the full £8,000—I am rounding up these figures. If we did it for the lowest paid, we would have to do it for everyone, which would mean extending the requirement on employers to pay a contribution on the first £5,715 to everyone in pension saving. In effect, that would be the equivalent of removing the lower limit of the qualifying earnings band, which would be unaffordable.