Ms Jacqueline Thornton:

There are precedents. There are examples in other jurisdictions where this type of structure does work. They are not overly common, but they do exist. I believe the Department did go to the Nordic countries to review that back in 2018 or 2019, and the approach appears to have changed.

The other point I wish to touch on, in response to some of the questions and to pick up on Ms Murdock's points about the gender pension gap, is a particular issue for us, and we issued a paper last year that the committee was furnished with as well. As we said in our opening statement, we do not expect that auto-enrolment is going to eradicate or mitigate the gender pension gap, but our contention is that we would not like to see auto-enrolment exacerbate it.

The point regarding the lack of flexibility top-ups and clarity about the State credit has been touched on. All those matters remain a challenge to be cleared up.

On the threshold, I will again refer to the UK, where a recent report - I think published at the end of last year - considered the £10,000 threshold. It was quite interesting from a gender perspective because, in respect of volunteering to opt in, it was found, even for those below the threshold, that more men than women volunteered to opt in. As regards a voluntary opt-in, the whole point of automatic enrolment is to leverage inertia and not have active engagement or decisions being made on the part of the individual, which we believe is disadvantageous to those women who are in part-time work or in multiple part-time jobs, for example. According to the general scheme of the Bill, multiple part-time jobs will be taken into account. We just do not know how that will work yet but we will see that as, hopefully, work progresses and the full Bill comes in. Certainly, as regards the £10,000 threshold in the UK, the Legal and General report we looked at set out considerations, including moving down to £6,000 to try to include more women and part-time workers.