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Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Automatic Enrolment) (Amendment) Regulations 2012

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Drake has dealt with the substance of these regulations from our perspective, so I can be brief and I shall ask few questions, which the Minister will doubtless be pleased to hear. We should start by acknowledging again the decision to proceed with an auto-enrolment following the independent review and to support NEST as an integral part of this. I think the Government should be congratulated on taking that forward. As the Minister will be aware, we have concerns about the scope of some of the easements introduced by the Pensions Act 2011 and by this suite of regulations but the basic architecture remains intact. However, further increases in the personal tax allowance, should these be forthcoming in the Budget, will exclude even more workers from the benefit of auto-enrolment with consequential savings for the Treasury. Obviously, we support offshore workers being brought into scope. This was always the intention. As we have heard, the order treats someone with an offshore employment as, "““a worker 'who is working or ordinarily works in Great Britain under the worker's contract'””," and similar provisions apply to Northern Ireland. However, the provisions do not apply where the employment is in the foreign sector of a cross-boundary petroleum field. Are we dealing here only with cross-boundary fields affecting Norway, or are there any others? I do not know about the Southern Basin or the Irish Sea, or whether there could be an EC country involved, which was the purpose of the question. I am interested to note that the noble Lord, Lord German, paid a trip to an offshore rig, as did I. I hope he undertook the helicopter training whereby they dunk you three times underwater and see if you escape—obviously the noble Lord did. I jest, but it is a very important part of the training and the risks that people working in those circumstances endure. It is noted that auto-enrolment applies whether or not the employer is incorporated outside the UK and presumably whether or not the employer is resident in the UK. Can the Minister confirm how jurisdiction is established in these circumstances? Is it via the licensing arrangements for the platforms? How were those entities reached to ensure compliance? We have made reference to the tribunals in the regulations, but what would be the legal process to reach them? We similarly support the inclusion of seafarers and the two groups of police officers. The certification provisions have been a bone of contention for some while. The objective of facilitating schemes, particularly existing schemes, without excluding tranches of jobholders has not been without its challenges. My noble friend Lady Drake has raised a number of significant questions, especially around definitions of basic pay and salary sacrifice, which I hope the Minister will be able to address—in writing if not immediately today. We have always been clear that easements to encourage good existing schemes to be retained should be supported provided they do not undermine the auto-enrolment opportunities, particularly for the lower paid. The Minister reiterated that the proposals before us mean that 90 per cent of jobholders will not lose out. What information do we have about the profile of the up to 10 per cent of workers who would miss out under these certification processes? On a small point of detail, I was trying to see from the text how the tax component of the payments fitted in to the formal relief. I can see it does not matter when you are dealing with arrangements where people get their tax relief by deduction at corporate and individual level, but on personal pension plans, if that tax contribution is made directly by HMRC into the scheme, I am not quite sure how that component is provided for in these arrangements. The Minister may wish to write on that, although I can see the Box scribbling away with confidence behind him as I speak. We are in a situation where we simply need to get on with this. This year is going to be an important year for auto-enrolment. Many people have striven for many years to make this a reality, not least my noble friend Lady Drake, and we are pleased to see that it is making progress.