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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, there is clearly a lot of consensus in the House around auto-enrolment, but I am afraid that one of the areas where there is genuine disagreement—there are not many of them—concerns the right earnings triggers for it. The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, seek to introduce a lower entry point for automatic enrolment, and we need to look at them with the amendment which seeks to cap annual rises in the automatic enrolment trigger to the higher general level of earnings and prices. Let me take a few moments to explain why it is our view that the threshold we are proposing is right and why reverting to a lower trigger would not be right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, pointed out, we reached a recommendation on the level by leaning on the Johnson review, which considered a number of factors: earnings dynamics, family characteristics, and the replacement rate which the noble Baroness finds distasteful. Let me explain why the replacement rate is an important factor. If you are earning a certain level of income through your working life, it does not necessarily make sense to take money out of that to have a better income later. That should be a choice for the individual—that is the theory of replacement rates. When you are looking at asymmetric paternalism and encouraging people to do things that they might not if they thought about it harder or were equipped to make those assessments, it does not necessarily make sense to create a situation where people find themselves scrimping and saving during their working life to have a slightly better lifestyle when they are older. That might be the right choice, but it should not necessarily be something that we encourage. If we only consider replacement rates, then the analysis done by the review shows that individuals with earnings in the £10,000 to £15,000-a-year range throughout their working life would, through the combination of the state pension and income-related benefits, receive replacement rates that are often in excess of 100 per cent. If it had been replacement rates alone that guided the setting of the threshold, it would have been set somewhere between £10,000 and £15,000. However, that clearly is not the whole story and the review recognised that. It recognised the importance of dynamic earnings, which mean that some of those who have low earnings today will still benefit from saving as they are likely to go on and earn more in the future, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. However, even that is not straightforward either—when a person’s earnings are low there is a genuine question about whether it is right to encourage them to save at particular times when they may very well have a pressing need to use all their income to meet present living costs. That led the review team to consider individuals’ family circumstances. These may well mean that a low-earning individual with a higher-earning partner might benefit from saving even when their earnings are low, as it would help provide a decent replacement rate for the family as a whole. In the vast majority of families with both partners working, their total earnings are significantly higher than the earnings of just one individual. Bearing all these complicated and interrelated factors in mind, the aim of the independent review was to set a threshold which maximises pension saving for those for whom saving is valuable, while minimising the number of those brought in for whom it is not. In doing this and making their recommendations, the review team struck a very careful balance. It is simply not correct to assert that all low earners will benefit from pension saving throughout their working life due to dynamic earnings, receipt of working tax credits or the fact that they live with partners who earn more; nor is it correct to say that all low earners will not benefit from saving. That is why we have the opt-in to allow those who will benefit from saving to choose to do so. Individuals who opt in and have qualifying earnings will of course still benefit from an employer contribution. No earnings threshold will ensure that automatic enrolment is perfectly targeted, encouraging saving among all those who need to save while excluding all those who should not—unfortunately, the world is not that simple. That is why the review team sought to identify the correct balance between all these factors. The Government accepted its findings, including the adoption of a higher earnings threshold; this was widely welcomed by stakeholders. We believe that the starting point that we have proposed in the Bill on the basis of the review recommendation strikes the right balance between ensuring that we do not encourage persistently low earners or those experiencing a period of low earnings to save, while ensuring that those who clearly will benefit are able to be automatically enrolled. We all agree that setting an appropriate earnings threshold for auto-enrolment is absolutely central to the success of the reforms. The arguments that I have heard today and during Committee have not persuaded me that there is sufficiently compelling evidence in favour of setting a lower threshold in the Bill when this is compared with what the review team has already considered in detail in reaching its recommendation. Let me turn to the second element of the issue: the mechanism for revaluing the automatic enrolment thresholds year on year. The aim of the independent review was to set a threshold for automatic enrolment which maximises pension saving for those for whom saving is valuable, while minimising the number of those brought in for whom it is not. In doing this, the review team recommended that the automatic enrolment earnings trigger should be aligned with the tax threshold, currently £7,475. The presumption of the Johnson review was that the trigger would remain aligned with the tax threshold, unless future action by Government resulted in a fundamental change in its purpose or the relationship between them. The Johnson review is clear about its view on the right direction of travel. The Chancellor has now announced the personal tax threshold for 2012-13 as £8,105. It is logical that this announcement has prompted the question, which my noble friend Lord Stoneham raised, as to whether it is our intention to uprate the automatic enrolment trigger to this figure for live running in 2012. We will want to undertake detailed work over the coming weeks and months to assess the impact of aligning the earnings trigger with that threshold of £8,105. We will look in particular at whether the right balance continues to be struck in terms of who is brought into auto-enrolment using this trigger, especially with regard to low earners and women. It is appropriate to share with the House the figures that demonstrate the impact of moving up to £8,105. It would remove around 100,000 individuals from automatic enrolment. It is also appropriate to share with the House the fact that the bulk of those are likely to be women—our figure is 79 per cent, a proportion consistent with the impact of the rise to £7,475. It is too early to say definitively that because £8,105 is the personal tax threshold for next year this will also be the auto-enrolment trigger. However, I can say that our expectation is that we would align with this figure, unless the evidence suggested that this was the wrong thing to do. It is therefore worth my repeating here the commitment I made at Committee that as well as the uprating order being subject to an affirmative debate, we will prepare an impact assessment to accompany the uprating order for each of the first five years up to and until shortly after the 2017 review. This will give us the opportunity to explain in detail to the House how and why we are proposing to uprate the auto-enrolment trigger and inform the affirmative debates that we will have annually. Times are changing—as we debate these issues, the Chancellor has announced not only a new personal tax threshold but a major review of the operation of tax and national insurance contributions. It is vital therefore that we retain for the long term the flexibility in the uprating power to allow us to consider a number of factors. First, we need to consider the possibility in the future that the earnings trigger could end up being within a few pounds of the tax threshold. What if, in such a situation, having anchored in all relevant criteria under the flexible provisions and taken into account all the evidence, the impact assessment suggests that the auto-enrolment earnings trigger should be £30 or less below the PAYE threshold? In that circumstance, it would be ridiculous to have different thresholds, separated by only 58 pence a week, given the burden on employers. Our priority must be to ensure that the reforms are credible and auto-enrolment works in practice. If it does not then we risk losing employer support and the reforms will not work. We also need a level of flexibility as we consider the overall emerging financial landscape. At this point we do not know with any certainty what level state pensions will be or where earnings and prices are moving to. This is a policy for the long term, and we live in an increasingly uncertain world. We need to retain flexibility so that we can respond to changing circumstances. Our primary aim in setting the earnings threshold that will trigger auto-enrolment must to be to ensure that we target the right group. The work that we will be undertaking over the next weeks and months will ensure that the threshold strikes the right balance between maximising pension savings for those for whom saving is valuable, while minimising the number captured for whom it is not worth while. The flexibility that this uprating power provides, and the ultimate decision to increase thresholds for automatic enrolment, will not sit in my hands. It ultimately sits in this House and in another place through the affirmative uprating debates and the accompanying impact assessments that I have committed to, which provide significant protection against unwanted changes. I beg the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.