Pensions Minister Guy Opperman has said that it is “astonishing” that the pensions industry is not doing more to help self-employed workers save for retirement.

Speaking at the PLSA Investment Conference 20202, Opperman urged schemes to step up their actions to get the self-employed saving.

He added that the government is “looking at” auto-enrolment as a way to get more self-employed workers in pension schemes.

Opperman stated: “It seems to me, with 15 per cent of the nation being self-employed, you are competing in a market which is becoming more and more competitive, yet the largest growth market is the self-employed.

“I find it astonishing that you are not engaging more to try and take these individuals into your schemes. It seems to me that we need to be trying to help them.

“Certainly as a government we are trying to enable schemes and opportunities for people that are self-employed to have access to pensions. We are looking at auto-enrolment on that.”

However, the government has previously been criticised by the industry for not doing enough to help the self-employed.

Commenting on Office for Nation Statistic figures which showed an increase in self-employed workers, Royal London pension specialist, Helen Morrissey, said: “The government can no longer afford to ignore self-employed people when it comes to pension provision.

"While auto-enrolment has helped more than 10 million people start building a retirement pot the self-employed have so far been chronically underserved.

"Government needs to move on from small scale pilots to look at ways of getting millions of self-employed people saving into pensions, including using new nudges via HMRC and the tax return process.”

Despite this, Opperman said today (12 March) that the government was doing “everything we can to improve the financial inclusion in this country”.

“We are doing great effort to try and improve self-employment, but I would urge you to look at how you run your business as well,” he concluded.

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