The new Pensions Act was discussed in Parliament last week and the during the debate the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s concerns relating to temporary workers were addressed by the Shadow Pensions Minister, Nigel Waterson.
The REC believes that it is not sensible to enrol temps automatically into a pension scheme because they may only work on a very short-term contract and then not use that recruitment agency again.
Not only would this be a pointless exercise as far as the worker is concerned, it would place an unnecessary administrative burden on the agencies. They think that a fairer solution would be to have a qualifying period before automatic enrolment in a scheme.
Mr. Waterson agreed with this view and said that the handling of the temporary employment market should be given further consideration.
The Minister of State for Pensions, Angela Eagle, answered this by stressing that the new legislation aims to include as many workers as possible and therefore temporary/contract workers are a key factor.
She did however acknowledge that the government will work alongside organisations like the REC in order to ensure that practical issues regarding agencies are addressed.
The pension reforms are still causing confusion for a lot of employers. The Personal Accounts Delivery Authority recently conducted research into various pension schemes and found that 90% of businesses feel that they need expert advice regarding the pension reforms. The majority of small firms are likely to turn to accountants for this.
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Day 6/7 by Rob Hayes.