Pensions Bill

moved Amendment No. 31: 31: After Clause 13, insert the following new Clause— ““Lower earnings limit Lower earnings limit (1) Section 5 of the SSCBA (earnings limits) is amended as follows. (2) After subsection (2) insert— ““(2A) A person’s gross earnings from all sources shall be aggregated when determining whether an individual is above the lower earnings limit.”””” The noble Baroness said: This is a deceptively simple amendment which addresses a heartfelt issue about which several noble Lords spoke at Second Reading, particularly and most graphically the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. Many people, mostly women, simply do not begin to get close to any pension entitlement because they have multiple, low-paid jobs which keep them below the lower earnings limit and are thus not entitled to the basic state pension. Individuals accrue a national insurance record from paid employment only if their earnings are above the LEL, currently £84 per week, from one source of employment. The rule about national insurance contributions and earnings over the primary threshold, which is £97 per week, seems completely incomprehensible, so I shall not attempt to go into it. The amendment would allow a person’s gross earnings from all sources to be aggregated to bring the weekly amount up to or over the lower earnings limit, so that pension entitlement could be accrued. As I said when speaking to an earlier amendment, the Minister will probably say that the reduction in qualifying years to 30 is enough to address this issue, as most women will be expected to have a full-time job or an entitlement to carer’s credits for much of their working lives. There is no doubt that the reduction in qualifying years is of great help to women with this pattern of employment, but it is not enough on its own, as we have heard in relation to other amendments. There will still be many thousands of women who fall through this net—the estimateis up to 15,000—and the Bill provides a golden opportunity to address the way in which people really lead their lives, rather than the tidy way in which government would like them to lead them. The Minister may cite also the complexities for employers of aggregating a person’s earnings from more than one source, but we surely cannot just sit back and wring our hands, allowing inertia to set in, when we know that a significant number of women, and possibly up to 5,000 men, will not be touched by this radical overhaul of pension legislation. The Equal Opportunities Commission points out that the administrative complexities in the aggregation of earnings cited by the Pensions Commission apply only to capturing the employers’ contributions. The EOC suggests that NICs could be collected just from employees. After all, this is surely compatible with the Government’s aim of giving people every chance to build up their state pension rights. The Minister in another place promised more research on this matter. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.