NEST (Revised Auto-enrolment Timetable)

Steve Webb Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

on 25 January, the Government published a revised timetable for the roll-out of the automatic enrolment duties from 2012.

The statement associated with the new timetable included the following paragraph:

“Medium sized employers will be re-allocated automatic enrolment dates between 1st April 2014 and 1st April 2015. This means that the implementation dates of some of these employers will be up to nine months later. However, this still means that around 70% of eligible workers will be automatically enrolled before the end of this Parliament compared with around 75% under previous arrangements.”

Since publishing this statement the modelling assumptions have been revisited. This affects the analysis of the existing implementation profile as well as the impact of the proposals outlined last week. Existing participation in workplace pensions is higher in large and medium-sized firms than in small and micro firms. This means that a lower proportion of workers in large and medium-sized firms will need to be automatically enrolled. A lower proportion of the 9 to 10 million workers eligible for automatic enrolment will therefore be enrolled in this Parliament.

As a result of this, the paragraph above should now read as follows:

“Medium sized employers will be re-allocated automatic enrolment dates between 1st April 2014 and 1st April 2015. This means that the implementation dates of some of these employers will be up to nine months later. However, this still means that around 55% of eligible workers will be automatically enrolled before the end of this Parliament compared with around 65% under previous arrangements.”

I apologise for this revision and for any confusion this may cause.