Almost five million self-employed workers could benefit from a “pensions revolution” allowing them to be automatically enrolled into pension schemes and choose their own state pension age, The Telegraph has reported

Following significant exclusion of the self-employed from the government’s key pension policies, the Work and Pensions Select Committee launched a formal consultation into self-employed workers’ benefits yesterday.

A key focus of the consultation will be auto-enrolling the UK’s self-employed workers, which make up 15 per cent of the workforce, (nearly five million people) into pensions through the governments auto-enrolment scheme.

The Committees inquiry also asks “how can self-employed people best be encouraged and supported to save for retirement?” and “should self-employed people be required to enrol in a pension?”

Industry experts have speculated that the consideration of the self-employed is long overdue as they have been excluded in major pensions reforms for a number of years.

The Telegraph quoted the Pensions Minister Richard Harrington: “It is clear automatic enrolment is playing a key role in shaping the retirement landscape for generations to come. However I want to build on this success and will be looking at how we can get even more people saving, and saving more."

Old Mutual Wealth pension expert Jon Greer commented: "It is encouraging that the Pensions Minister has said he will see if it is possible to find a mechanism to bring the self-employed into automatic enrolment.

"The government needs to ensure that it is easy to implement the scheme as the self-employed don’t have the payroll systems of big employers.

The deadline for written submissions to the Work and Pensions Committee is 16 January 2017.

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