Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of people excluded from auto-enrolment as a result of changes to the earnings trigger in the Pensions Act 2011 and reviews subsequent to that Act.

We do not hold the information in the format you have requested.

The 2011 Pensions Act implemented workplace pension reform measures from the independent Making Automatic Enrolment Work Review. This sought to simplify the automatic enrolment process where possible, balancing the needs of employers and individual savers.

The Act set out a requirement for the automatic enrolment earnings trigger level to be reviewed every tax year. This provides the opportunity to keep the automatic enrolment thresholds up to date and relevant in light of changing economic circumstances and ensures it continues to strike the right balance between maximising the savings incentives for individuals and minimising costs for employers. In doing this, it pays particular attention to the impact of this on groups currently under-represented in pension saving such as women and low earners. Analysis of the impact on the automatic enrolment target group resulting from each of the annual reviews of the earnings trigger and qualifying earnings band can be found at;

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/automatic-enrolment-earnings-trigger-and-qualifying-earnings-band

I announced the decision to freeze the automatic enrolment earnings trigger for 2017/2018 at £10,000 on 12 December 2016. This is estimated to result in an additional 70,000 individuals being brought into automatic enrolment, of which around 50,000 (75 per cent) per are women.