Dr. Laura Bambrick:

On the competitive disadvantage, with the movement towards auto-enrolment another concern raised was that such legislation would encourage companies to close down their pension scheme before this legislation or similar legislation was enacted. Since this legislation was last in the House and since the Social Welfare Bill 2017 coming from Government, we have seen movement towards auto-enrolment albeit that other milestones are being missed. Members will agree there is momentum towards auto-enrolment that did not exist in 2017 when this legislation and the other legislation were introduced.

While auto-enrolment will not remove the incentive and the unfair competition, it will seriously reduce it. DB pension contributions will be much higher than what is likely to be required by auto-enrolment. While there is no current legal obligation for companies to provide a pension, that will soon be addressed. On competitive disadvantage, auto-enrolment will even the playing field because we would regard most employers with a DB scheme as good employers. We share the concern that nothing should be done to put those jobs at risk. While we are eager to have this protection for members of DB schemes, we also want to protect the viability of those jobs. Therefore we are not requesting anything we feel would jeopardise that.