"Bring self-employed into automatic enrolment"
23 November 2016
“Finding a mechanism to bring the self-employed into automatic enrolment should be the kind of thing that we are talking about in a review”, says Richard Harrington, Minister for Pensions.
In an interview with the Financial Times the Minister said that the self-employed are not all people with accountants and IFAs and that many self-employed people could now be earning the minimum wage, maybe a bit more, but it is complicated.
Richard Harrington added, “… we have to look at them being included in an envelope like the automatic enrolment system - and the same with people who have multiple jobs.”
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CIPP comment The ‘review’ that the Minister for Pensions is referring to is of course the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) automatic enrolment review which will take place next year. With over 6.4 million individuals automatically enrolled into a workplace pension so far the review will be an opportunity to consider how to build on this success to further normalise pension saving, and to increase the amount being saved. The DWP are welcoming initial thoughts from the pensions industry and stakeholders on what should be included within the scope of the review. We have already seen research that looks at the effect of removing the qualifying earnings bands and removing the earnings trigger and no doubt there will be far more radical considerations to come. |