Pensions - Articles - NEST restrictions needed to ensure workers auto enrol

 Responding to the release today of the Work & Pensions Select Committee report, which recommends that the contribution cap and transfer ban on NEST operations should be lifted, Legal & General Pensions Strategy Director, Adrian Boulding, has called for the Government to keep the two restrictions in place.

 Adrian said: "There is a strong social need for a National saving scheme (NEST) amongst the low paid and the hitherto un-pensioned, the majority of whom may be working for small employers. These restrictions keep NEST tightly focussed on the areas where the nation needs it. Removing the restrictions before the scheduled review in 2017 would risk NEST becoming distracted to the detriment of the very consumers it was created for. "

 Government have recently confirmed that although auto-enrolment starts in 2012, it will not be until 2017 that all existing employers will have been brought on board.

 Adrian continued "There is a real danger that the smallest employers will not be able to find a private pension scheme, and that is why over £100 million of taxpayers money has been spent creating NEST. It would endanger the whole auto-enrolment programme if NEST were allowed to go off in other directions now and neglect the very people it was created for."