An article by The Telegraph said that the indefinite delay was expected to be announced as part of the Chancellor’s autumn statement, which will be published tomorrow, and will be portrayed as a boost for business.

Larger businesses will still be obliged to automatically enrol their employees into pension schemes from next year.

A spokesperson from the Department for Work and Pensions was unavailable for comment.

The predicted change in the rules comes after a report for the government by Adrian Beecroft, the chairman of Dawn Capital and former chief investment office of Apax, which said auto-enrolment should be delayed, both because of the impact on businesses and the risk of employees having more of their income taken up by pension contributions while retailers are struggling.

Under the government’s original proposals, which were to be phased in from 2012 for the largest companies and progressively hit smaller businesses over the next four years, every employee over the age of 22 with a salary of at least £7,475 would have to be enrolled into a pension scheme by their employer, who would have to contribute towards it, no matter how small the company is.

Companies with 120,000 employees or more will have to start doing this from October next year, while businesses with less than 50 employees were not obliged to implement auto-enrolment until 2014.