My Lords, I thank the Minister for that explanation and I do not propose to detain the Committee long on this order.
For many years Governments of all complexions have looked at ways to encourage the UK workforce to save for their retirement. There have been several changes to pension legislation but none as big as the Pensions Act 2008 and the pension reforms that will affect every employer in the UK. Since October 2012 new regulations require every employer in the UK to enrol automatically their eligible workers—which will be almost everyone—into a workplace pension scheme.
I want to say how much I appreciate that this Government has given such strong support to auto-enrolment, which was begun by the previous Government but taken forward by the present one. We also welcome the Government’s policy intent in these regulations to allow schemes providing career average salary benefits to be used as qualifying schemes for the purposes of automatic enrolment. This is a positive step and has the support of the Opposition. The Opposition will continue to support the Government to ensure that auto-enrolment is a success and the move to ensure that both average salary benefits schemes and hybrid schemes are a part of auto-enrolment is also positive.