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Occupational Pensions

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?