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Occupational Pensions

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.