Occupational Pensions: Airdrie and Shotts

(asked on 25th September 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of people in Airdrie and Shotts constituency have (a) opted out after being auto-enrolled into a workplace pension and (b) saved more than the auto-enrolment minimum contribution.


Answered by
Guy Opperman Portrait
Guy Opperman
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This question was answered on 1st October 2019

Automatic enrolment has achieved a quiet revolution through getting employees into the habit of pension saving, and reversing the decline in workplace pension participation in the decade prior to these reforms. Since automatic enrolment started in 2012 participation rates have been transformed with 87% of eligible employees saving into a workplace pension in 2018, up from 55% in 2012.

The Department does not hold data for individual constituencies in relation to opt outs or the number of individuals who have saved above the automatic enrolment minimum contribution level. However, we do know that overall around 9% of automatically enrolled workers have chosen to opt out which is significantly below original estimates, and our latest evaluation report shows that in April 2017, approximately 5.9 million eligible employees were already meeting the April 2019 minimum contribution rates.

In the Airdrie and Shotts constituency, from 2012 to August 2019, approximately 8,000 eligible jobholders have been automatically enrolled and 960 employers have met their duties.

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