Section 3: Automatic enrolment
25.Section 3 introduces the employer obligation to automatically enrol jobholders aged between 22 and state pension age into a scheme that fulfils the criteria for an “automatic enrolment scheme” (see section 17). Automatic enrolment must take place when the individual first meets the relevant criteria (i.e. is a jobholder and is over 22) in that employment. This is known as the “automatic enrolment date” (subsection (7)).
26.The section contains a power which allows the Secretary of State to set out in regulations the steps the employer must take to arrange for the jobholder to be automatically enrolled (subsection (2)).
27.This obligation does not apply if, within a prescribed period, the jobholder has been an active member of a qualifying scheme in that employment, but chose to end membership (subsection (4)). This is to prevent jobholders being automatically enrolled into a scheme soon after they decided to leave.
28.The employer may be required, as part of the automatic enrolment process set out in regulations, to provide prescribed information to any person, in particular the trustees or managers of an occupational pension scheme or the provider of a personal pension scheme (subsection (5)). This will enable the provision of information about a jobholder to the scheme to enable their enrolment.
29.There is a power which enables the Secretary of State to make regulations under subsection (2) to deem an agreement to exist between the jobholder and the provider where the employer fulfils their employer duty obligation by automatically enrolling the jobholder into a personal pension scheme that meets prescribed conditions (subsection (6)).
