Roundtable with James Purnell MP: the personal accounts debate

Compulsion versus auto-enrolment Nick Bamford, managing director of Informed Choice: I would like to discuss the government’s decision to opt for automatic enrolment over compulsion. Why not adopt compulsion? What did the government find unacceptable about compelling people to save beyond a State pension? James Purnell, Minister for Pension Reform: We do compel people to save through the State pension as people do have to pay tax and they do have to have a State pension. So the question in relation to making provision beyond that was should it be compulsory? We thought that there were s...