Work and Pensions Committee chair Frank Field has criticised the government’s auto-enrolment review for its lack of “boldness”.

Published yesterday, 19 December, the government revealed that the qualifying age for auto-enrolment will be reduced to 18, down from 22. However, there was disappointment from the industry on the review’s proposals to bring more self-employed into pensions.

In its election manifesto, the Conservative’s had proposed to make auto-enrolment available to the self-employed, but instead the review revealed the government will be trialling different methods to encourage the self-employed to save for a pension and targeting different groups.
Field said that auto-enrolment was a “bold leap” for the government, which has been “hugely successful” in getting millions of people saving into a pension.

“This review shows none of that boldness in announcing a few minor tweaks and tentative pilot schemes. The analysis accompanying the report shows 12 million people are under-saving for retirement, including a growing army of the self-employed. It is time for the government to revert to bold type in building on its past successes,” Field said.

The analysis that Field refers to is the review’s analytical report, which revealed the introduction of auto-enrolment reduced undersaving from 14 million to 12 million people. Of the 12 million currently undersaving, around 1.6 million (13 per cent) fell into the bottom two pre-retirement earnings bands (earning less than £25,000 a year in today’s earnings terms) while more than half of all undersavers are earning more than £34,500 in the run up to retirement.

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