Making Auto-Enrolment Work - The Government's Proposals

The Governement has confirmed today how it intends to introduce the requirement for automatic enrolment of employees into pension schemes.

The previous Government introduced legislation to require all employers to designate a pension scheme into which all their employees between age 22 and state pension age would be automatically enrolled (unless they opted-out).  Employers would have to make contributions of 3% of earnings (within a prescribed band) into the scheme.  This requirement would start to apply sometime between 2012 and 2016 depending on the size of the employer.

The Coalition Government's view is that inertia will lead significant numbers of people to remain automatically enrolled in the scheme designated by the employer.  Therefore, whilst they have decided to retain the broad framework of the legislation already in place, they commissioned an independent review to look at the scope of auto-enrolment and whether it was necessary to retain the proposed