Minister floats self-employed auto-enrolment.
The government is planning a review of pensions in 2017. The minister responsible, Richard Harrington, reported in the Financial Times, says bringing self-employed people into the auto-enrolment system should be on the agenda.
Self-employed workers would pay extra national insurance contributions and the money used to buy private ‘auto-enrolment’ pensions.
Mr Harrington said: “The self-employed aren’t all people with accountants….many could now be earning the minimum wage, maybe a bit more, but it’s complicated”.
Citizens Advice research shows 1.1 million self-employed paying into a pension in 2001. In 2014 it was 450,000. Over the same period the total number of self-employed grew by a third to 4.5 million.
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