Personal accounts: a new way to save

The Government published its White Paper, Personal Accounts: A new way to save, on 12 December 2006. This was followed by a period of public consultation which closed on 20 March 2007. The Government has now published its response to the consultation.

This White Paper sets out the Government's proposals to encourage and enable greater private pensions saving. Measures proposed include placing a duty on employers to automatically enrol all eligible workers between the age of 22 and state pension age into a good quality workplace scheme and provide a minimum contribution to those who remain enrolled. This would be added to a minimum contribution from employees and a contribution from the Government in the form of tax relief. The White Paper also proposed the establishment of a new national low-cost personal pension vehicle (currently known as personal accounts) for those currently without access to a good quality workplace scheme.

In November 2008 the Pensions Act 2008 enacted many of those proposals in law. Most of the measures in the Act will come into effect from 2012, but information will become available for those who will be affected by the measures in advance of this date.

The White Paper 'Personal accounts: a new way to save' is a large document. To make access to the PDF version of the White Paper easier, it has been split into a number of separate files. The "Contents" file gives more detail on what information is included in each file. The Executive Summary is a shortened version of the full document.

Executive Summary