Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that around 3.5 million private sector employees do not pay anything into their pensions in a given year, and what they will do to address this.

Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Automatic Enrolment has already seen more than 11 million people enrolled into pension saving to date, with around an additional £29 billion in real terms saved into workplace pensions in 2021 compared to 2012.

Automatic Enrolment (AE) is and will continue to be based on the principle of extending saving to as many people as possible for whom it makes sense to save. We remain committed to increasing the number of employees who are saving, through implementing the AE 2017 Review measures to lower the age for being automatically enrolled to 18 and abolishing the lower earnings band for workplace pension contributions, which will disproportionately benefit lower earners, giving them access to an employer pension contribution for the first time. This will see 3 million people saving £2 billion extra a year.

The Government supported the Pensions (Extension of Automatic Enrolment) Act 2023 which gives us the legislative powers to implement the expansion of AE subject to consultation. We remain committed to doing this in the mid-2020s.