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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is a relatively straightforward amendment to provide some certainty in a situation where an employee could have their auto-enrolment deferred more than once because they failed to reach the earnings threshold in one or more months in the three-month waiting period. Perhaps it might be sensible if I gave an example. A jobholder works for two months and their pay is above the threshold, but in month 3 their pay falls below the threshold. Then, when month 4 arrives and their pay perhaps goes back to being above the threshold, it is not clear whether that triggers a new three-month starting period or adds to the two months when it previously happened. Whether the waiting period begins again in month 4 or concludes is the key question here. Should the three months’ earnings be cumulative or consecutive? This could be the case for many workers in the leisure and tourist industries where work is perhaps seasonal and in the catering trade where it is often related to the number of customers and people are called to work more or fewer hours according to the demand on their services. So a situation where people may not reach the threshold in one month but have reached it in the previous two months is not unlikely. It seems quite unfair if, as soon as they fall below, they have to start again. I remember somebody who formerly worked for me who then went off to train as a barrister and it took him many months to get his final qualification because he could not get to the number of dinners that he had to achieve in the right order. Every time he missed one, he had to start again from dinner number one. It seemed a strange mechanism and we do not want this archaic methodology in this Bill. I beg to move.