Webb creates auto-enrolment uncertainty

The pensions minister told the House of Commons all businesses previously due to enrol staff from April 2014 have been let off the obligation until after the next general election, likely to be in May the following year.

The change in staging date, which included official Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) figures from its information for employers document Auto-enrolment: the facts, claiming it would include all firms with fewer than 249 staff.

These figures (pictured) subsequently proved to be wrong and have been removed from the DWP website.

But businesses with more than 50 but fewer than 3,000 staff also face delays of an as yet unspecified length of time, though PW understands this will still ultimately involve firms of around 250 staff being reprieved until May 2015.

And according to figures from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills, this will mean a 50% reduction in auto-enrollees before the next general election.

However, Webb told the House: “We have… decided to extend the reform’s current five-year implementation so that small businesses will not have to start enrolling their workers until the start of the next parliament.

“The revised plans will, nevertheless, still result in more than half of all workers being enrolled before the end of this parliament…

“In terms of certainty, everybody who was due to be enrolled this side of July 2013 will see no change in their dates and we will publish early in the new year the revised schedule.”

Shadow pensions minister Gregg McClymont criticised the move, saying his claim all employees will ultimately be auto-enrolled “is not going to reassure anyone”.

He added: “The fact is… that the schedule has been moved back and millions upon millions of the employees whom he was keen to get saving in a pension scheme will not be auto-enrolled until after 2015.”