Tag: Baroness Drake

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Drake on 2016-02-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase private pension saving by the self-employed.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

The 2005 Turner Commission recommended that the self-employed should be able to join a pension in an easy and cost-effective fashion. Therefore the Government-backed pension provider, the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) offers low-charge pension schemes to the self-employed, as well as to all employers.

Automatic enrolment has been a huge success to date with almost 6 million eligible workers people now enrolled. We will be reviewing automatic enrolment in 2017. We are keen to identify issues that should be addressed within the review and will be working with stakeholders to determine its scope.

The Government also recognises that the self-employed might benefit from saving in different ways to employees. In 2011 the Government introduced carry forward of annual allowances, which allow individuals with irregular earnings to use any unused Annual Allowance from the previous three years to contribute more to their pension in particular years, if this suits them better than making more regular pension contributions.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Drake on 2016-09-12.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with HM Revenue and Customs about the annual publication, in standard format, of data on the drawing of pension savings that have to be reported as taxable income by (1) age, (2) gender, (3) characteristics of income draw down products, (4) cash lump sums, and (5) annuities.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) publishes the number and value of flexible payments made from pensions since April 2015. The quarterly publication does not include breakdowns of pension payments by characteristic, nor are there any plans to.

In accordance with the National Statistics Code of Practice, Official Statistics are shared with a minimal number of named officials 24 hours prior to publication. HMRC maintains and publishes a record, which can be found on gov.uk, of all of those who have pre-release access to National Statistics and Official Statistics.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Drake on 2014-06-12.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to lower the level of fees for access to employment tribunals.

Lord Faulks

The Justice Secretary is committed to reviewing the impact of the introduction of fees in the employment tribunal system. The Ministry of Justice is currently finalising arrangements for the timing and scope of the review to ensure that the impacts can be properly assessed. An announcement will be made when the review begins, and again when it has been completed, setting out the results.