20 May 2008
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell announced
that automatic enrolment will be extended to insurance-based
workplace personal pensions from 2012. The Government plans to
amend the Pensions Bill 2007 to allow automatic enrolment after
receiving confirmation that this was consistent with European Union
(EU) law.
The Pensions Bill already allows for automatic enrolment into
trust-based schemes such as company pension schemes, but the
Government wanted confirmation that automatic enrolment into
contract-based schemes such as personal pensions would be
consistent with European law. The European Commission provided
confirmation this week.
James Purnell said: "There are currently 4.7m people who work
for a company with a workplace personal pension and are not
members. This announcement will extend benefits of automatic
enrolment to millions more people - giving them the means to save
for their retirement for the first time."
