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Pensions Bill [HL]

Will the Minister just help me on one point? I do not want to prolong this. If the complexity he suggests arises from the need to monitor cumulative earnings over a two-month or three-month period, I can accept that, but we do not need that. If we just had the proposition that somebody waits for three months and if at the end of three months they do not have qualifying earnings and are therefore not auto-enrolled, you simply roll them on to the next point that they do have qualifying earnings. You put them in the pot the same as anyone else. Is that not a simpler system than having an alternative system whereby you have to see who has been previously deferred and had a waiting period and keep the clock running on them individually? I would have thought the simpler system was not to have to take account of cumulative earnings but, once you get past that three-month period, simply to check, as you would have to for everyone, whether they have reached the age of 22 or qualifying earnings, et cetera. There is quite a lot of disquiet around this. We are not trying to be difficult. I urge the Minister to take this away because I see it as something that could be brought back on Report.