Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he is taking steps to encourage young people under the age of 18 to opt in to pensions.

The 2017 Review of Automatic Enrolment (AE) sets out our ambition to reduce the qualifying age for AE below 22, so that younger workers can begin to save as soon as they join the labour market.

The government supported the Pensions (Extension of Automatic Enrolment) Act 2023 which gives us the legislative powers to implement this expansion of AE subject to consultation with employers and workers. Government is committed to make this change in the mid-2020s.

In the meantime, the current AE framework allows workers who are not automatic enrolled to opt-in to a workplace pension, including those below age 22, and many employers already choose to enrol those workers.