Tag: Gordon Marsden

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the rationale was for the provisions in the Pensions Bill which allow employers to differentiate pension conditions between previous public sector employees now working in privatised companies and protected persons.

Steve Webb

The Pensions Bill creates a statutory override designed to allow employers, to a very limited extent, to make changes to the scheme to recover the increased cost of National Insurance that follows from the introduction of the single tier pension.

Protected persons are a small group of individuals (approximately 60,000) employed in some formerly nationalised industries, namely rail, including Transport for London, electricity, coal, nuclear waste and decommissioning, where the employers are limited in their ability to change scheme rules by legislation made at the time of privatisation. This legislation prevents employers from making changes to the pension benefits offered to those employees who were previously employed by the State. The Pensions Bill reaffirms that restriction.

This is a very different situation to other privatisations where a trust deed, rules or other undertaking was made at the time of privatisation, which was not endorsed by Parliament in the same way.

The important distinction we have made is that where duties to restrict changes to the future pension rights of specific workers, in specific industries have been enshrined in law and endorsed by Parliament, the statutory override should not allow employers to disregard that legislation.

It should also be noted that contractual agreements between public sector organisations and third parties, which may provide pension protection for staff now working in private companies, are not affected by the statutory override

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of whether an individual on the minimum wage for a full working lifetime will receive a higher retirement income under the new single tier pension system than under the existing pension system.

Steve Webb

It is not possible to answer this question, as in order to calculate how much state pension an individual may receive in retirement under the single-tier system, compared to the current system, it is necessary to make a considerable number of assumptions. For instance: when they reach State Pension age, whether they have been contracted-out of the Additional Pension, or how many years they live after retirement.

Chapter 3 of the Single Tier Impact Assessment provides a detailed commentary on factors that are likely to influence whether someone is a notional gainer or loser compared to the current system.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254151/a-pensions-bill-single-tier-ia-oct-2013.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of trends in (a) take-up of workplace pensions and (b) anticipated retirement income from current workplace pension accounts.

Steve Webb

a)

Automatic enrolment is increasing the take-up of workplace pensions and will continue to do so as the reforms continue to be rolled out over the next few years. The latest figures from The Pensions Regulator show that over 3.2 million individuals have now been enrolled into a workplace pension as a result of the reforms.

In 2013, 50 per cent of all employees were a member of a pension scheme, rising from 47 per cent in 2012. This was the first increase in participation since 2006 and represented the largest rise since records began in 1997. In particular, for the largest private sector companies (those with more than 5000 employees), 51 per cent of employees were members of a workplace pension scheme, up from 36 per cent in 2012. These figures were collected in April 2013 when automatic enrolment had been running for just 6 months.

(b)

Without automatic enrolment, median private pension income was expected to fall from around £3,900 a year in 2020 to around £2,200 a year in 2050. However, with automatic enrolment the median private pension income is expected to be around £3,600 by 2050.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the performance of the Pensions Regulator is assessed in relation to trends in (a) take-up of workplace pensions and (b) anticipated retirement income from current workplace pension accounts.

Steve Webb

The Pensions Regulator pursues five main objectives as set out in section 5 of the Pensions Act 2004. These objectives include the protection of benefits to the members of work-based pensions schemes. The Pensions Regulator’s key performance indicators are designed to operate in support of its statutory objectives.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2014-04-07.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many times failure to pay the minimum wage has been (a) reported, (b) prosecuted and (c) penalised in the maritime sector since the Equality Act 2010 came into force.

Mr David Gauke

The Government takes the enforcement of national minimum wage (NMW) legislation very seriously and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) enforce the NMW legislation on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and has done so since the introduction of NMW in April 1999.

HMRC investigates all complaints made about employers suspected of not paying the minimum wage, in addition carrying out targeted enforcement where it identifies a high risk of non-payment of NMW across the whole of the UK.

Since 2006, HMRC started considering prosecution for minimum wage offences. Since then, there have been 7 investigations into employers in the Water Transport sector. None of these were identified as having failed to pay the minimum wage.