5.21 pm
Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con): I think and hope that the Government have listened to the compelling arguments made by all the speakers this afternoon in this very important debate, which has sadly been cut short, not least by an obviously orchestrated campaign by the Government Whips Office to intervene in order, it would seem, to put the ombudsman on trial. However, I shall not waste time discussing that; the members of the public who have been listening to this debate, and the 700 members of the former Dexion scheme, will have heard that for themselves.
I pay tribute to the Chairman of the Select Committee and to the ombudsman for a brave report and for sticking to their guns. There is an old-fashioned phrase that is not heard much these days: natural justice. Their report is an attempt to secure natural justice for many of our constituents and their families and loved ones, who have had their pensions stolen from them.
I became a Member of this House only some 18 months ago, but approximately five years ago the campaign team for the former Dexion workers approached me and showed me the documentation that they had been given over the many years that they had worked for Dexion. They left that documentation with me and it did not take me long to realise that they had a very strong case, in the light not just of the recommendations and actions of this Government, but of those of my own Government in the period since 1995. The leaflets were flawed; that was my view before the election, and the reason why I have worked tirelessly to help them.
The 120,000-plus people whose pensions were affected are not just numbers. We have heard about the fantastic work that Ros Altmann has done on behalf of the campaign group, and I pay tribute to Ros today. These are ordinary people who were going about their business; in my company’s case, they had worked for the company for a very long time. They had done the right thing. They had paid into a Government-recommended, perfectly safe pension scheme, so that they would rely not on state benefit, charity or a handout from a scheme, but on a pension scheme that they had purchased on behalf of their families and loved ones.
Marlene Cheshire—a delightful lady—had to tell her husband David on the day he died that the compensation had come through and that everything was okay, so that he would pass away thinking that everything was okay for her, and that she had been left with the money. The Minister met the widows group that I brought to him. The stories that they tell are massively distressing. Marlene is one of 400-odd members of such schemes who receive some money from the financial assistance scheme. The Minister knows how much she gets—£20 a week. If the decimal point were shifted, that would be somewhere near what she should have got.
I am not saying that the taxpayer should pay everything, and nor are the former Dexion workers campaign group, the ombudsman or the Select Committee. What we are saying is that we need to come up with a plan. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) has come close with the ideas that he put forward today, some of which I was going to offer myself. I shall raise other issues. For instance, the schemes are still being forced to purchase annuities. Why? How much is left in the schemes? Perhaps the Minister can tell us when he winds up the debate, because the figure is missing and there is a lot of money still being administered by the trustees.
Many of the unclaimed assets that the Chancellor thinks that he can use are from pension schemes in insurance companies. What better use could there be for that money than to compensate those wonderful people?
Mr. Bellingham: My hon. Friend makes a compelling case. He will be aware that I represent several Albert Fisher pensioners, many of whom have lost more than 20 years of occupational pension benefits. They were forced to contract out of SERPS and put their NI contributions into the Albert Fisher scheme, but they will get only about 50 per cent. of their expected pensions. What my hon. Friend is saying about the unused assts and other approaches that the Government must consider is absolutely correct.
Mike Penning: I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. So many of those people joined their companies on apprenticeships when they were 15, 16 or 17. I was lucky in that I joined an apprenticeship in the armed forces at 16, so my pension is safe. Those people worked for one company, loyally, for their working life and, if they are not within 15 years of retirement, they have lost everything. The scheme will not give them a farthing. They have to go back out to work and build up a whole new pension all over again. What faith can they, their families and friends or anybody who reads the report of this debate today have in pension schemes? They will be frightened because they will not get many of the benefits of the Pension Protection Fund that the Government have introduced. It is not index-linked and they cannot take any of the benefits in a tax-free lump sum, which they would have been able to do in their own schemes. The widows are suffering enormously. There are so many issues that make one scheme right for one group of people but wrong for another. Where is the natural justice in that?
I would have loved to speak for longer, but the debate has been cut short, as I have said. I hope that we can all come together as a Parliament to accept the ombudsman’s report. Parliament appointed her to assess cases and she can find for the Government or against them. In this case, she happens to have found against the Government and that there was maladministration. I hope that we can accept the Committee’s report, sit down, bang some heads together and set up a fund that will give the people the living that they deserve and the pensions that they should have had.
5.27 pm
...
OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE
Mike Penning: I have wanted to intervene for some time, but the Minister keeps giving way to his hon. Friends, rather than Conservative Members. Will the Minister continue to tout the figure of £15 billion, which came out of the ether, as the amount that the taxpayer would have to pay, although it is clearly wrong?
James Purnell: That figure was calculated by our economists, and we have set out exactly how it was calculated. We have also made it clear that it is the net present value, but that is the way in which the Government accounts for their spending. It was net present value that was used in the pre-Budget report yesterday, too, because that is how resources are controlled in government. The debate has made it clear that, on one point, there is no difference between us and the Opposition—we both think that more taxpayer money should not be put into the scheme. The Opposition agree with us that we are at the limit of what taxpayers should do. We have worked hard to find extra assistance, and we have extended the scheme. In a previous speech on the subject, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) said that
“at no stage have the official Opposition ever committed taxpayers’ money to this issue above and beyond what the Government have already committed.”—[ Official Report, 27 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 175.]
We have worked hard to increase the scheme and will continue to work hard with Members of all parties on the subject. We believe that we have made a significant contribution, because we recognise the real distress and loss that people have experienced. We have listened carefully to the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase and his Committee, and we will continue to keep the matter under review. We have made it clear that we will consider deemed buy-back again, and that we will keep the issue of whether there are any other sources of funding under review, but I am afraid that we have come to the conclusion that there are no other sources of funding that could make good, and provide the significant amount of money that would be required—enough to pay for 8,000 nurses, 6,000 teachers or 3,000 doctors.
| Hansard
