Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): I welcome the following representatives from the Association of British Insurers (ABI): Alastair Ross, who is assistant director and head of public policy for Scotland, Wales and the North; and Ben Infield, who is policy adviser in long-term savings policy.

Alastair, I invite you to make a brief opening statement. You will have five to 10 minutes maximum, and then we will move on to members' questions.

Mr Alastair Ross (Association of British Insurers): I will pass over to my colleague Ben, who will make an opening statement.

Mr Ben Infield (Association of British Insurers): The ABI is the voice of the UK's world-leading insurance and long-term savings industry, representing our membership of about 300 firms. We are here to talk about automatic enrolment extension.

Automatic enrolment has been a huge success in increasing the number of people who are saving into pensions across the UK, bringing a further 10 million people into pensions savings. In Northern Ireland, we have seen a substantial increase in the percentage of employees who are aged between 22 and 29 participating in a workplace pensions scheme. The rate has gone from 25% in 2012, which was pre-automatic enrolment, up to 72% in 2022. However, there is still a lot to do.

The first decade of automatic enrolment increased phenomenally the number of people who are saving to a pension, but the next decade needs to be about making sure that they are saving enough for a sustainable retirement. As part of that, the Pensions (Extension of Automatic Enrolment) Bill, which we are here to talk about, does a good job in extending the pension eligibility for automatic enrolment down to people who are aged 18, whereas it is currently set at the age of 22. It would also allow people to save from the first pound that they earn, whereas, at the moment, there is a lower earnings limit of around £6,000. That would be a tremendous help to those lower-age people, meaning that they would not have to save as much later in life due to the wonders of compound interest. It would also offer a huge boost to the lowest-income earners, as they currently miss out on that first chunk of pension savings on the income that they earn.

We are very supportive of the Bill, and beyond the measures that we are talking about today, we are also calling for a gradual increase in the minimum contribution under automatic enrolment over the next 10 years. As an organisation, we believe that we need to get towards 12% of total pension contributions. At the moment, we are at 8%. In our vision, that would be split evenly between employees and employers, given that there is, obviously, government tax relief with that.

I will stop there and ask Alastair if he would like to add anything.

Mr Ross: No, I think that you have covered it all for now, Ben. We are happy to move to questions, and you can get the full use of the time that you have with us.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Thank you. I have a couple of questions, and then we will go to members.

The rate going from 25% to 72% is a significant improvement. Do you have a breakdown in age bands showing where the gaps are? Can you identify those people who are in the remainder of the gap? Do you have any advice for us about how we can try to close that gap and engage those people?

Mr Infield: I do not have a huge splatter of statistics on each age cohort. We have seen fantastic improvement in those who are within the automatic enrolment eligibility, that is, those who are aged 22 up to pension age. There is still work to be done, and the Bill seeks to address that for those who are aged 18 to 22. We have seen that rate go up from 1% to 17%, which, again, is a massive increase, but it still needs to go up by a lot. Bringing those 18-year-olds in under the Bill would tremendously increase that number, because they would be automatically involved. Currently, they can opt in to pension savings and still benefit from employer contributions if they earn over £6,000, but bringing them in automatically would massively increase the number of people who are saving.

Mr Ross: As Ben said and as you would expect, most pension scheme savers in workplace schemes are older. Some 83% of the workforce in the 40-49 age group and in the 50-59 group are such savers, so they are in a good place and are well advanced in building up a pot for their retirement. It is worth remembering that retirement can now last between 20 and 25 years or even 30 years or more. While we are talking today about the accumulation phase of your pension pot, you also need to put more thought into what can be called the "decumulation" phase. Once you start drawing it down, should you buy an annuity under the old model and simply have a fixed income for the rest of that term? That term will depend on your life expectancy, and you will have to consider whether it will last for 20, 25 or 30 years or even more. The concept of a pension and how you operate it is quite different now. The people who are in the older age groups are probably better placed. Ben touched on the number of people who are in the younger cohort. We have seen a significant increase in that number, but there is room for improvement.

I will pick up on your question about promoting the measure and engaging on it. Sessions like this are the day job for Ben and me; we do this all the time. What is absolutely clear is that there is no one, single way of doing this; there is no one guaranteed method to reach everybody that you want to get involved. The industry is adapting to that in a number of ways. Advice is available through the Money and Pensions Service to people who are approaching retirement. That is free advice through the MoneyHelper scheme. I took advantage of it recently. It helps you think about your position regarding the amount of money that you are likely to need for retirement, whether you are on track for that and whether it will keep you in the lifestyle that you are looking for.

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association estimates that if you want to have a minimum income for your retirement, you will need £14,400 a year. That has to last for a significant time. If you want to be comfortable and maybe have a wee foreign holiday from time to time or run a wee car, as a single person, you would be looking at an income of about £43,100 a year, and a couple would be looking at almost £60,000 a year. You can work out at various points in your career whether your pot will be able to deliver that kind of thing. You can use the MoneyHelper service, as I mentioned, when you are getting towards retirement. You can have a midlife MOT such that, when you are in your mid-40s and still have a significant amount of earning capacity, you can start looking and checking. You can still add significantly to your pot in the second half of your career when your earnings are, hopefully, going to be a bit higher. You can take steps then.

The younger cohort is a bit more challenging. I will use a personal example from our family. Our eldest daughter is 22. She made my day earlier this week when she sent me a message that said, "Guess what, Dad? I've opened a workplace pension". I said, "That's great. That's my girl". Then she said, "It's only another 45 years before I get the benefit of it". I could not argue with that, but she was understanding the importance of opening a pension earlier. As Ben said, there are very important reasons for doing that. The earlier you start, the more you accumulate over time, and you can develop a greater pot based on the compound interest. You might not be saving a lot at the start, but that grows over an extended period. That is the industry — the professional — answer.

I did not think that I would be doing this, even a few short weeks go, but I point you towards the influencer and TV celebrity Gemma Collins from 'The Only Way is Essex'. We have just recruited her to run our pension attention campaign this year. She is exactly the kind of person we need to be working with, because she reaches audiences that, with the greatest of respect, Ben and I cannot reach. People recognise her; they pay attention to her; she has a huge social media following; she is on the TV; and she is in magazines. She is in the places where young people are, and she is going to help them talk about and understand pensions. She has a very clear message. To quote her, it is "free money". If you start a pension now with automatic enrolment, you will be paying a small proportion of your salary, but you are also getting free money, essentially, from your employer, who makes a contribution, and from the Government in the form of tax relief. We are always looking and pushing. Gemma Collins is the celebrity that we are using this year, and she is already proving to be very effective. Last year, we used the TV presenter Timmy Mallett, who appeals to a different demographic from a different period, and before that, we used Big Zuu, the rapper and celebrity chef.

It is all about trying different things in different ways to get people thinking about their pension at different points in their life and careers, so a lot of work goes into it.

We are, as Ben said, off to a good start. Automatic enrolment has been transformational. I would argue that it has probably been the most effective public policy intervention by a Government in the UK for the past 10 or 15 years or so. It is making a tremendous difference. We need to keep that momentum going forward. One of the really important parts of it are the proposals that have been set before the Assembly about the changes under the Bill.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): Where those proposals are concerned, do you have any concerns about or comment to make on the Bill or on issues that might create unintended consequences?

Mr Ross: I will pass to Ben in a moment if I may, but, no, we are very supportive of the Bill. It would keep you in line and in step with what is happening in Great Britain, which is very important from a workers' mobility perspective, if nothing else. Also, we are very conscious of the development of auto-enrolment in the Republic of Ireland, where it is at a much earlier stage. The legislation there was passed this year, and it will probably take the best part of 10 years to get it to a point that is comparable with the UK scheme, but it is very important that you have that parity.

It is important that it comes forward. The extension argument touched on only the terms of the benefits for younger people and the ability to start contributions from the first pound that you earn rather than waiting till you reach the threshold. I will hand over to Ben, because he is the expert on this.

Mr Infield: I would not say that there are particular concerns. The Bill does a brilliant job in extending the success of automatic enrolment by, first, making it simpler. If you ask anyone about the so-called band earnings that mean that you do not get any pension contributions until you have earned over £6,240, they will say that the system is very complicated. If you can just say to people, "Well, you start earning contributions as soon as you earn money", that is a fantastic improvement. It is similarly simplified for employers. Instead of having to segregate 18- to 22-year-olds, who are not in automatic enrolment, they can now add everyone who is 18 years old and upward.

The other point is that there is political consensus on automatic enrolment. The Labour Government in 2002 started the process. It went through subsequent changes of Government at Westminster. It survived the COVID pandemic, so even through the furlough scheme, the automatic enrolment payments were guaranteed. It is a very logical extension to a successful automatic enrolment policy. Unlike when it was first rolled out, all the institutional infrastructure is there, so it is much simpler than when it was introduced.

Ms Mulholland: Thank you both for your report and presentation. You might not be able to answer this, but that is OK. Have you heard anecdotally of any kickback from smaller businesses that might be under a bit more pressure when they have to expand automatic enrolment to their entire workforce? You said that it streamlines the process and makes it easier on the admin side, but what about the financial implication?

I am shocked at the gender disparity. There are reasons for that, whether they be women taking caregiving breaks in their employment and being more likely to be in lower-paid jobs. Other than expanding automatic enrolment, have any other interventions been seen in industry to improve that gender pension gap? I will ask the same question about ethnic minority groups.

Mr Ross: I will answer the point on employers' views and maybe defer to Ben, if that is OK, on the gender pensions gap.

With regard to employers, we have, as you would expect, spent a fair amount of time over the past 10 years-plus talking to the Federation of Small Businesses , as well as to the CBI about the representation of larger businesses, because we recognise absolutely their concerns about additional overheads to their operating costs at a time when they are under significant pressure. However, the measure is mandatory. It is now the law that you have to provide the measure. One way of looking at the employer contribution is to see that it is part of the overall reward package. If you want to get technical about it, you could describe the employer pension contribution as the third salary. It is part of the overall pay that their employers are entitled to.

The legislation sets out the minimum contributions. Some employers go further than those. One reason that they are doing that is because they see it as a competitive advantage. As we are aware, the labour market is relatively tight in the UK. There is not a lot of slack in it, so employers are having to think about how they can be a more attractive proposition than their competitors to prospective employees. One way of doing that is by showing that you are a responsible employer, you do the right thing and are prepared to make that commitment to support your staff and take that longer-term view about their benefits, along with things like providing healthcare and above minimum-wage packages where they are affordable.

I absolutely recognise the pressures that are on employers. Some of the numbers that we have looked at on reducing the contribution threshold as proposed under the legislation suggest that it would cost an employer about £4 a week per employee. That does not sound like a huge sum of money, but, obviously, it goes over 52 weeks and depends on how many employers you have. When you are already making that contribution, it is not a substantial step up to embrace the increases for the younger workforce that we are talking about.

Mr Infield: Thanks very much. I will just pick up on a few points about the employer perspective and the gender and ethnic minority pension gaps. There have been some interesting surveys on employer ambition. It is widely recognised by a lot of employers that they do not think that their current pension contributions and the system that they have will reach retirement adequacy. I think that half of UK employers want to specifically address retirement adequacy in the next two years, so there is a lot of ambition among employers to help with that. We do not wish the policy change to come in in one fell swoop. It should probably happen over a number of years so that employers have time to arrange cash flows appropriately and make arrangements for it to come in gradually.

On the point about the gender and ethnic minority pension gaps, we are in total agreement about the gender pension gap being astronomical. The figures that we have show that the average pension pots for women are £69,000 compared with £205,000 for men. That is staggering, and, unfortunately, it is to some degree a reflection of the gap in earnings in the economy, but there are also specific things that we can do. The Bill will help women proportionally much more, because we know that they are over-represented in the lower income earners. The £6,240 on which you do not start paying pension contributions is a much better chunk to somebody who is on a lower earning than to somebody who is on a higher earning. Proportionally, it is a much bigger gain for those people.

We in the ABI focus a lot on divorce. We know that, in most divorces, pensions are not discussed, but, legally, there is the right to share all assets. We are very keen to progress that, and, again, it comes back to the point about engagement and making sure that, when they get to retirement, single mothers or divorced women in particular are not suddenly surprised that there is no pension retirement.

Ms Mulholland: Thank you.

Mr Bradley: Thanks, gentlemen, for coming to the Committee today. I take a different viewpoint in that, if the Bill is introduced, you will be talking about 18- to 22-year-olds. Have you had any engagement with education establishments, especially through careers advice, to advise young people who are going into employment of the benefits that would be accrued if they had a decent investment into a pension scheme from an early age? Have you engaged with education establishments in any way?

Mr Ross: That is a very good point. We work with the Money and Pensions Service, which is very active in Northern Ireland, and its remit runs to financial education. That is some of the curriculum-based stuff that you are talking about on helping students to understand at an early age what a pension is, how it works, its benefits and the transition that happens when they go into the workplace and are made aware of the fact that their employer will offer them the chance to opt into a workplace pension.

It is important to point out that it is a mandatory requirement for an employer to provide it, but it is not compulsory for the employee to take it up. There is an element of choice there. We are very pleased that about nine in 10 people take it up, but that still means that there is one in 10 who, for whatever reason, does not avail themselves of that option and opportunity, as Gemma Collins said, of getting free money from their employer or the Government. There is still work to do there.

It comes back to what I said earlier. We are part of a team that is tackling this, and we are always looking to work with different partners that can help us to reach groups in society that we are not currently in touch with. Gemma Collins is one way of doing that. The Money and Pensions Service in Northern Ireland — we will catch up with it after this meeting — is another really important partner in that. If you have any particular views or advice on other groups or organisations that we should be talking to, we are always interested in exploring that and sharing the materials that we have. Also, we want to learn from them what resonates with people who are in that situation of leaving education and starting full-time or part-time work and not being familiar with the concept of a pension.

Mr Bradley: I will be in touch.

Ms Armstrong: The legislation proposes to take automatic enrolment down to age 18, but we have 16-year-olds in apprenticeships. One of my concerns is that we are excluding people at an age when we need to encourage them to get into their pension as early as possible. Apprentices do not get paid an awful lot of money. To be honest, rather than seeing it from the other angle — you talked earlier about competitive advantage for employers — actually, given that apprentices have a hard time getting employers to take up apprenticeships, it would have been better if we had gone down to age 16, but we are where we are with this legislation.

Just on apprenticeships, Northern Ireland has a skills gap, and a skills strategy is coming forward. We will be looking for more people to train in certain skills. Maurice asked whether there was any discussion happening with the further education colleges about the way forward for pupils who are in non-academic education. They will have started work earlier than those in academic education, and I am keen that we do not lose them. By the age of 18, it is possible that they will have been in employment for up to two years, albeit on a terrible apprenticeship salary. If we could have encouragement for their employers to include pension enrolment in their apprenticeship, for instance, that would be wonderful. That would be for under-18s. Some over-18s may be NVQ level 2, 3 or 4 at that stage. I wonder whether there has been any push on that. Has there been any discussion with government so that, when investing in apprenticeships, they encourage those employers to take this up?

Mr Ross: Again, what you are touching on will fall within the remit of the Money and Pensions Service here, but we are certainly happy to take that up with it. In discussions with government, we have not specifically discussed that, but we are open to doing that, and I will take that away as an action point. I will write to the Department and see whether we can have a conversation to understand what is going on there and what information we might be able to contribute as an industry for those 16- to 18-year-old apprentices who are in a specific position, and you have communicated that very well. We will follow up on that.

Ms Armstrong: I have a nephew who is an apprentice. He has been through it and is almost out the other end. There are so many things, including the Housing Executive, that our 16- and 17-year-olds are excluded from. It would be good to include those who are already committed to working and who are earning a terrible salary at age 16 and 17. Their savings for the future are so important.

Mr Infield: May I just add to that? Today, we are talking about automatic enrolment, which is where people are automatically put into saving. If you are aged 16 and earn over £6,240, you can opt in yourself and still benefit from the contribution that the employer makes and the tax relief. If you earn under that amount, you can request to join, but it will be down to the employer whether they want to do that. There is scope to further extend things, but they —.

Ms Armstrong: So, enrolment is automatic at age 18, but they can —.

Mr Infield: Exactly. They would have the right to be on the same terms as somebody aged 18. They just have to do it willingly themselves. With pensions, the difficulty is often with engaging people.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): It may be worth considering education or putting that into careers education. I do not think that that is widely known. It might be useful to promote that a bit.

Mr Kingston: Obviously, there is full support around the Committee for this move and for the Bill. I want to ask about unintended consequences. Obviously, employers will do this for their higher earners and older employees. It is about whether the lowering of the age requirement and removal of the earnings threshold will make employers less inclined to take on young people in seasonal employment or over the summer, or might they find ways in which to avoid that by paying cash in hand, not employing young people formally or encouraging them almost to be self-employed. What support will you provide for employers to ensure that they employ people properly and do not avoid that obligation and responsibility? I presume that they will have the normal choice. Employers might use a certain pension company. If an employee has a private pension, will they have the right to say, "I would like it to be paid into my pre-existing pension", or can the employer say, "No. I have a certain one set up, and I just want to keep it that way"?

Mr Infield: I will take that last point first. Currently, you have the right to request that your employer pay into your existing pension, but that would be at their discretion. Over the past year, there has been talk about whether we should move to a model where that would be a universal right for everyone, but that has not been decided upon. Assuming that an employer would like to keep an employee within the scheme that they have set up for all the rest of their employees, the employee would go into that workplace pension.

Mr Kingston: The employer has that right.

Mr Infield: Yes.

On the wider point about meeting that automatic enrolment requirement, the Pensions Regulator is in charge of ensuring that employers in the UK who have eligible employees provide those pensions for them. It imposes fines where it finds that employers are not living up to those liabilities. That is, maybe, a separate question. The question for 18-year-olds is, I guess, whether there would be ways in which to go outside of standard employment practices. Potentially, but most employers will employ people of a range of ages, so I think that it would be much simpler and probably more cost-effective to use the existing pension provider set-up that they have and automatically enrol people from 18 years of age. As I say, it is a simplification, in that they know that anyone who is over the age of 18 just goes into that bucket for an HR system. For anyone who has to do the paperwork, it is a simplification, I would say.

Mr Kingston: Who supports the employers? I know that they should have it set up anyway for their older employees, but is there support through the Department? Do you provide support?

Mr Infield: Support in terms of —?

Mr Kingston: Whom do people go to if they have concerns? Is there support for employees in the first instance and for employers to support them to ensure that they are complying?

Mr Infield: Sure. The Pensions Regulator will be able to tell an employer whether they need to provide pensions for their staff, because there are those kind of eligibility metrics. They go to the Pensions Regulator for that. The firm that the employer chooses to have their pensions with will give them a lot of guidance on and support with running their scheme. The employer role is to share employees' information and ensure that the paperwork is done, but, actually, when it comes to investment and pensions, that is all done by pension providers themselves. We are representatives of those providers, so we would not necessarily help employers, but they can get HR services or employee benefit consultants who are able to help employees to decide which pension arrangement would be best, for example.

Mr Ross: From the employee's point of view, there is the trade union movement, which is a firm and clear supporter of the principle of pensions, but especially of auto-enrolment. The trade union movement has the capacity to organise and advise employees. We mentioned the Federation of Small Businesses earlier: it, the CBI and the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce are all up to speed with the issue. There is broad support for the principles, and it is more about good consultation and a phased implementation to avoid a significant hike in overheads in a particular financial year. There should be signs to a pathway or a clear route to the increases over time so that employers can see them coming and build towards them. There is a lot of advice in that collective for employees and employers.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

Ms Ferguson: You mentioned the increase in the employer contribution to 5% with a further increase for employer and employee contributions to 6% in your recommendations. Has an impact analysis been done on that? As you said, a phased implementation is important, but I am concerned about the gender gap analysis that was highlighted this morning and the impact that it could have. I am conscious, as a woman in her 50s, that, in my previous job, a number of women cashed out their pension when they turned 55 because they needed the money. They were single women living on their own. I am gravely concerned that that could be a trend and that there could be an increase in it. It might not be for today, but have you any insight into the ongoing and potential impact, before the end of the mandate, of a further increase of up to 6%?

Mr Infield: To be clear, the 12% overall figure is 6% from the employer and 6% from the employee, and it is what we want to see over the next decade. The Labour Government have committed to holding a pensions review, so they will be looking at advocacy and the minimum contribution rates now. On the basis of the work that we have done, we propose that there be only a 1% increase for employees over a 10-year period, which is quite an achievable goal. For employers, it would be 3% to balance that out, and that would be spread across a decade to allow firms to get used to those cuts. There needs to be flexibility in the system. Therefore, 12% is an ambition for most people to save, but we want further flexibility.

Currently, you can opt out of pension saving completely if you feel that it is not affordable. We want an ability to opt down if there are times when people are finding it hard but do not want to lose their pension contributions, or, in the other direction, we could have a 10% total and allow people to opt up to the 12% ambition. We want greater flexibility. Also, taking into account people's financial resilience, we are aware that there are a lot of lower earners for whom the 12% overall figure is a large amount of money. Therefore, we are also looking at options such as a sidecar savings system, which is where a short-term, easily accessible savings account is attached. The savings account fills up before the pension, and, once there is, for example, £1000 to use in cases of emergency or financial distress, people move to full pension contributions. It just adds further flexibility to allow people to meet their needs.

Ms Ferguson: Considering adding all that flexibility is useful. Earlier, you mentioned that, as things stand, 10% of people opt out. What is the general breakdown of that?

Mr Infield: It differs.

Ms Ferguson: For individuals.

Mr Infield: If you look at the demographics, you will see that it differs by ethnicity, gender and whether the individual is employed in the private or public sector. Generally, the percentage opting in in the public sector is much higher because it has a defined benefit scheme. Essentially, there are very valuable pensions in the public sector, which are much more of an encouragement to save. Across the private sector, the number of people saving is slightly lower. People of white ethnicity tend to have the highest pension savings. Among Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicities, the levels are quite a bit lower, around the 70% mark. Obviously, as well, there is a split between genders and between part-time and full-time. As I said before, women are over-represented in low-income work and, as part of that, in part-time work. The number of part-time workers who save tends to be slightly lower. There are so many different ways to split it, and you can look at the minutiae, but that is the general picture.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): One final question occurred to me as you were talking. We mentioned artists and others earlier. Is there sufficient protection for people who work in very precarious occupations on zero-hours contracts or for those in the gig economy or hospitality? Those occupations are often very heavily weighted towards young people and women. Is there sufficient protection, encouragement and engagement in that area, in your opinion?

Mr Ross: The kinds of groups that we are talking about here are some of the hardest to reach, such as people who work in the gig economy or people who have multiple jobs: in order to support one overall income, they are in two or three different roles, none of which are likely to be terribly well paid. Those people are in the sectors that you mentioned, such as hospitality, which are the ones that young people gravitate to early in their careers. They are some of the hardest groups to get through to. Obviously, if you are self-employed, you do not have an employer looking after you, and you do not get the same requirements for the provision of a pension opportunity.

While people will take different approaches, we are advocating the build-up of a pensions pot so that you can draw that down in retirement. There are other ways to build your assets, such as through property. With some ethnicities, you see a further breakdown of that where people are more likely to put their money into property that they can sell at retirement and move into a smaller place. They get their money that way as opposed to building up a pension saving.

The groups that we are talking about are really quite difficult to reach and engage with. As you said, some of that employment is quite precarious. If you are taking a job on for a few months, you are not really thinking 45 years ahead to when you will retire and start to draw down that money for the lifestyle that you want to support. That is a million miles away from where you are at that point.

We are looking at ways in which we can reach those kinds of audiences, but we are being realistic about what their expectations and requirements are. The requirements of a self-employed skilled professional, whether they are a tradesperson, such as a plumber, a joiner or whatever, will be quite different from those of somebody who is riding around on an electric bike delivering meals. You need to be aware of the circumstances and positions that those people are in, but, at the same time, they should not be excluded just because of the particular jobs that they have decided to take or because they decided to go down the self-employment route.

I go back to what I said earlier: no single way or single expert will get you to absolutely all of those people. Look at the status of various people in the UK and the pensions advice that they give: the one whom people listen to the most is Martin Lewis. The reach that he has through his television programme, his website and various other activities is probably in excess of anything that anybody else can do. It is about using all the different channels that we have, including financial journalists and experts such as Iona Bain, who is working with us on the Pension Attention campaign and is able to speak from a younger person's point of view. She has a different perspective because she is not part of the older workforce, and she can sympathise with a lot of the challenges that people in those kinds of circumstances face. It is about finding the right kind of people whom those different groups will listen to and then ensuring that we have the material and information that they need.

The Chairperson (Mr Gildernew): I am aware that Conor Murphy is working on better jobs legislation. Hopefully, that will lead to improvements. Far from excluding people, we need to make further efforts to include them. That is a bit of a concern.

Thank you for the briefing, your responses to members' queries, which have been very useful, and for attending today.