Deputy Susie Pinel told the Health and Social Security Department Scrutiny Panel that the Social Security fund for pensions was in ‘a good state at the moment’ when she was questioned about the need for employers to make sure they offer workplace pensions to their employees.
A recent consultation paper compiled by her department revealed that 48 per cent of people who responded believed that the government should introduce compulsory workplace pensions.
The Living Longer Thinking Ahead paper also showed that 37 per cent of respondents said that introducing legislation to make workplace pensions compulsory was a priority.
Deputy Pinel told the panel: ‘We need to evaluate the results first, but there are no immediate plans to introduce legislation.
‘I would like to encourage employers to consider offering workplace pensions.
‘A lot of people who answered the survey hadn’t even considered paying in to a pension. A lot of those people were aged under 30 and we cannot allow that to happen.
‘The Social Security fund for pensions is in a good state at the moment, so there is no need to rush into introducing legislation. It’s about six years before we really need to start worrying.’
Sue Duhamel, the policy director for the department, told the panel that it was important that Jersey looked at available options before bringing in new laws and added that consideration must be given to small businesses.
She said: ‘I know that Guernsey has introduced a scheme, but we need to make sure we do not rush into anything and just do it because Guernsey is. Introducing legislation does seem like a sensible thing to do but that isn’t something that will come into force within the next two years.
‘There will be pressure on small businesses if legislation is brought in because they would need to add a contribution. We could make the employers contribution quite low to begin with.
‘We need to make sure we get something that is right for Jersey before we rush into introducing anything.’
