Several industry voices have called on the government to build on the recommendations made in the Taylor report, published today, on the subject of pensions for the self-employed.

Royal London director of policy Steve Webb said: “We welcome the Taylor Review focusing on the gaps in retirement saving for the self-employed. Our research shows that the lack of retirement provision amongst the self-employed is reaching crisis levels, and needs to be addressed. The Government now needs to build on the momentum for action in this area and take forward the proposals on pensions and auto-enrolment as a matter of urgency.”

In addition, Barnett Waddingham senior consultant Malcolm McLean said that it has been the view of the pensions industry, for some time that the growing army of unpensioned self-employed workers should be brought into the ambit of auto-enrolment. “Surely the question now is not if this should happen, but how and when it can be best achieved,” he said.

“The possibility of using self-employed workers’ tax returns and diverting a percentage of their profits and gains into an approved pension saving scheme has merit, this may be a way of addressing some of the more obvious logistical problems involved. As far as possible, however, the basis should mirror that in use for employees with a specified 4 per cent contribution rate plus 1 per cent tax relief. A further cash top-up from the government in lieu, as it were, of a separate employer contribution - the self-employed, of course, are their own employer - is worthy of consideration.

Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association director of external affairs Graham Vidler said: “Almost five million people or 15 per cent of the UK workforce identify as self-employed. This has grown 25 per cent in the last ten years at the same time as pension saving among self-employed people has fallen precipitously.

“New rights for those working in the gig economy are welcome and government needs to provide clarity around dependent contractors and automatic enrolment. Dependent contractors should be treated as workers for the purposes of automatic enrolment and be automatically enrolled into a workplace pension. Government now has a window in which to address this. Failing to take these steps could accidentally create different classes of worker: those with automatic access to workplace pension saving and an employer contribution and those without. This is a long-term problem which we have the opportunity to remedy now.”

In addition, The People’s Pension director of policy and market engagement Darren Philp said: "The Taylor report shines a spotlight on the discrepancies in workers' rights, including the glaring gap in pension rights for the self-employed. The report rightly highlights the extension of automatic enrolment as a solution to very low retirement saving amongst the self-employed and we are keen that the government now drives this forward through its review of auto-enrolment."

However, Aberdeen Asset Management head of retirement Gregg McClymont was critical of the review, and said it was a “big missed opportunity”.

“There’s nothing meaningful in the review about pensions. It makes no sense to not extend the pensions provision enjoyed by the majority of workers to those in the gig economy. These jobs have been created because the invention of the internet has changed the world of work for many people. Those changes are here to stay and the rules and laws that govern work need to catch up.

“New technology and changes in the labour force have always been intimately linked. Occupational pensions were invented by employers nearly a hundred years ago with government support as a means of ensuring that their employees did not have to work until they dropped, but could retire with dignity. We need a similar shared vision now to once more bring occupational pensions to excluded groups – namely the self-employed. Technological change is proceeding at a dizzying pace. government needs to catch up”.

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