§ Mr. CousinsTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), of 3 November 2003,Official Report, column 474W, on 212W stakeholder pensions, if he will estimate how many new stakeholder pensions have been taken up by those with no earnings. [137761]
§ Malcolm WicksThe information available is in the table:
Stakeholder pensions: Number of individuals contributing1 by status2 and earned income3 for year ending 5 April 2002 Individuals (thousand) Employees £0-£9,999 a year 170 £10,000-£19,000 a year 300 £20,000-£29,000 a year 150 £30,000 a year upwards 60 Total 680 Self employed £0-£9,999 a year 30 £10,000-£19,000 a year 30 £20,000-£29,000 a year 10 £30,000 a year upwards 20 Total 90 In receipt of a pension 10 Child 20 Full-time education — Carer — Unemployed 10 Other 20 Total 840 1 The table refers to the number of individuals whose stakeholder pension has received a contribution during the year. 2 Status is largely based on what is reported by an individual when making their opening application, or for existing business by the provider. 3 Earned income is derived from the Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI) and consists of all income chargeable under Schedule E (mainly pay, private and occupational pensions, retirement annuities and state retirement pensions), Schedule D Cases I and II (self-employment income), and miscellaneous other earnings. Notes:
1. The information in the table is taken from IR website statistics (Table T7.10.) It shows individuals contributing to a stakeholder pension, by status and earnings. The data are derived from a sample of annual returns of information submitted to the Inland Revenue by stakeholder pension providers. Numbers are rounded to nearest 10,000. Totals may not sum, due to rounding.
2. The data are collected primarily for compliance purposes and contains details of contributions made by or on behalf of individuals.
3. As well as containing individual details, such as name and date of birth, the data also contains their national insurance number. Using this it possible to aggregate across those who have arrangements with one or more providers. Therefore, unlike tables 7.4 and 7.5 which are based on aggregate returns from providers and are therefore at arrangement level, IR are able to present these results at an individual level. In addition the providers have to report the status of the individual in the following categories:
213W
- Employee
- Pensioner
- Self-employed
- Child
- Carer of a child aged less than 16
- Carer of a person aged 16 or over
- In full-time education
- Unemployed
- Other
4. Any individual making a gross contribution of £3,600 or less to a stakeholder pension from 6 April 2001 does not have to present evidence of earnings to the provider to whom they are making the contribution. Therefore in order to assess the earned income of contributors IR has matched the individual details provided where possible with the Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI) 2000–01.
5. The SPI is a representative sample of nearly 200,000 individuals, drawn from the Revenue's Self Assessment, Pay As You Earn and Claims systems. Where IR has been able to match these individuals to the SPI, primarily those with earned income, the 214W totals in the tables are based on this sample. For other groups that are unlikely to be in the SPI, such as children, IR has used the whole database directly to derive counts and amounts. For this latter group further analysis is limited to the data that providers have to submit.
6. The table relates to the number of individuals who have a recorded contribution in the year—either individual, employer or minimum. While in theory the data should give details of all individuals, in practice due to incorrect or missing data less than 100 per cent. of records are available for analysis. To account for this the results in the tables have been scaled to known administrative totals.