AEA Technology Pension Scheme

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Steve Webb]

I wonder if I may make more progress, to be fair to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds, as I want to respond on a few points.

The money went across; the firm was then private. Clearly, the business went on trading for 15 years or so. An issue arises about whether it was a prosperous, expanding firm where something funny went on, or on the brink of insolvency. I want to clarify what went on; my hon. Friend referred to it in part. In November 2011, the company issued a trading statement saying its financial position was deteriorating, and it was discussing the situation with its banks. In April 2012, AEA Technology’s latest forecast indicated that the company would be insolvent on a cash-flow basis by June 2012.

It can be simultaneously true that a company is recruiting more people and that it has terrible cash-flow problems. If the point is reached where it cannot meet its liabilities, it becomes insolvent. To give a sense of scale, the deficit in the pension fund as of 2011, on a standard basis, was £315 million, and the company could not afford to pay £6 million towards it. That is how bad things had got. So on the notion that somehow that £315 million deficit, which was £450 million on a buy-out basis, was going to be cleared, that was not going to happen.

Pre-pack administration is controversial and difficult and happens only when the options are insolvency with jobs lost and the pension fund going to the PPF, or insolvency with jobs saved and the pension fund going to the PPF. That was the choice. In fact, because of the pre-pack, hundreds of jobs were saved. To make a comparison with a straight insolvency, I am advised that the scheme would have got about £1 million with a routine insolvency, but the pre-pack enabled it to get between £6 million and £8 million.

My hon. Friend is quite right: frankly, when a scheme is £300 million in deficit that will not make any difference, because it is going to end up in the PPF anyway, so the benefit is to the PPF and not the members. However, the Government do not encourage struggling firms to shovel their pension fund deficits off to the PPF and carry on trading. It is allowed only where insolvency is inevitable. Our judgment was that that was the state of the company at the time, and the goal was to save some jobs, because the scheme was going to end up in the PPF anyway.

My hon. Friend asked about PPF benefits, and he is right: it is a compensation scheme. It is not a pension scheme that replaces and mirrors the benefits that were to be provided in the scheme. The reason for that is that the money for the PPF comes from other pension schemes, so any improvement in the benefits under the PPF is a bigger levy on employers who run other pension schemes. We should bear in mind that it did not exist much more than a decade ago. When it was set up, it was decided that it would offer broad compensation—100% above pension age, and 90% below, and indexation post-1997. That is the statutory requirement; schemes must index post-1997, and not pre-1997, and that is why the PPF does so.

My hon. Friend asked whether, because the firm was privatised, it should be made a special case. Of course I sympathise, but on the other hand vast numbers of workers now work for private companies that were previously nationalised. If AEA Technology were to be declared a special case, the pension funds of all the people who used to work for BT or British Airways and all the privatised companies would have to have special arrangements, too, with huge cost implications.

The question about the advice note given at the time is important. I have read the GAD note, and its introduction says, at 1.1.3:

“The note is not intended to suggest that any one course of action is better than any other. This would depend on individual circumstances, and if you are unsure of the most suitable course of action you should seek Independent Financial Advice which would take into account your particular circumstances.”

That was the point of the note. People could leave the money where it was, transfer it across to the AEA scheme or take a personal pension transfer. The note was explicit from the start that it was not designed to lead people down a particular route. In a sense, from the Government’s point of view it did not matter. The Government were going to transfer across the cash value of the rights built up, so they did not care whether people transferred across. There would have been no reason for GAD to write a note designed to lead people to a particular outcome. It would cost the Government the same either way.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend understand that the frustration of the pensioners and those of us trying to represent them is compounded by the fact that there seem to be different players in the game, including another Department? We are grateful to him for responding to the debate, but perhaps he could nudge the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to reply to questions I tabled to try to get further answers for my constituents.

[Steve Webb]

I am very happy to ask colleagues at the Department to respond to my right hon. Friend’s questions. Obviously, as he said, the issue of PPF is a DWP responsibility, but insolvency policy—pre-packs and so on—is a BIS responsibility, and of course he should get prompt responses to his questions. If my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West still wants to intervene I am happy to give way.

Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words. We are aware, and we have also been warned by you, Mr Caton, that the details of this case are the subject of legal action. The details of whether Ford is legally responsible for its former employees will be tested in court, and that is right and proper, so I do not want to talk about that.

However, I do want to discuss the reasons why Ford has a moral responsibility for this issue. May I state for the record that this is not personal? I have great respect for the individuals at Ford—for Joe Greenwell, who is the chairman of Ford of Britain and for Christophe Clark, head of Government affairs. I have always found them to be open, accessible and willing to engage with the group and come and talk to us, and I recognise that this issue is outside of their control; it is not in their hands. They are neither directly or personally responsible for the case. In return, I want them to understand that I am standing up for my constituents and trying to get justice for them and that this is not a personal attack on them or on Ford per se. None the less, I, like many others, believe that Ford has an obligation towards its former employees.

I must also pay tribute to the Visteon pensioners action group, which has been utterly tenacious in its pursuit of justice and completely committed to its cause. Without its dedication, this issue would have slipped off the agenda a long time ago, leaving thousands of pensioners with no hope of recompense.

As I have said, Ford has a moral obligation to its former employees, many of whom have spent a lifetime of work at the company. I became aware of the issue just after midday on 31 March 2009 when what we now know to be a very troubled company finally met its end—Visteon, a firm many will never have heard of, was placed unceremoniously into administration. When the administrators arrived, they turned off the machines, sacked the staff, turned out the lights and locked the doors, and that was that.

Many would say that Visteon was just another victim of a worldwide economic crisis and that as an automotive parts manufacturer, the collapse in car sales made its position untenable. Although those are contributing factors, the whole story is somewhat more complex. Sadly, in the wake of the collapse, there were not just hundreds of unemployed workers at every level of the business but thousands of present and future Visteon pensioners who had been seriously disadvantaged. Moreover, there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of Visteon pensioners, who have worked for Visteon, who do not yet know that they have been disadvantaged and may not find that out until they come to retire. Although VPAG and various other groups tried to get in touch with the beneficiaries of the fund, not all of them have responded, which is a great shame.

What has all this to do with Ford? Visteon was not just another business that failed to adapt to the modern world, but part of a large American corporation. Interestingly, Visteon Corporation went into chapter 11 shortly after Visteon UK collapsed. We all know that Visteon was Ford’s global parts manufacturer. It was a multi-billion dollar business, supplying everything from brake drums to radiators. It had started off as part of Ford, but soon became a separate trading arm before eventually being spun off. Why was it spun off? It is true that there seemed to be a trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s to spin off businesses and to separate out the manufacture of parts from the main business, but what was the reason behind it? The answer to that is relatively simple and the crux of why Ford has a responsibility to its employees. Ford wanted out. I have this nagging feeling that someone somewhere within Ford decided that they wanted to get out of the parts manufacturing business; it was too expensive, too labour-intensive and Ford knew that it could get the parts cheaper elsewhere. That is why Visteon was born.

We heard the evidence from my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green when he quoted Tim D. Leuliette, the new chief executive of Visteon Corporation—it is now out of chapter 11 and is being restructured—who, when asked whether Visteon ever had a chance, said, “No”. He told us about the labour costs, the burden, the overheads and how it was a joke. He then said:

“It was sort of like when you’ve got an uncle you know has got a problem but no one in the family wants to talk about it.”

That is quite important, because Ford always talks of itself as a family. In 2011, it was Ford’s 100th anniversary in the UK, and Bill Ford came over to the UK and made a speech at the Science museum. There were a couple of telling remarks in his speech. He said:

“I have always thought of Ford employees, dealers, suppliers and partners as members of our extended family. My visit here has confirmed that belief—it has felt like a homecoming.”

Further on, he said:

“Ford of Britain has a proud heritage…The United Kingdom quickly became the most important market for our cars outside of the United States.”

There is no doubt that here in the UK, Ford has played an important role. If this is how Ford treats its family, I would be sad to think that it would treat other people in its family in the same way.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

I acknowledge that my hon. Friend probably has as deep an attachment to this issue as any other colleague, and many hon. Members have spoken with great knowledge about the issue today. Does he detect any way in which we can achieve anything in the court of Parliament if a favourable answer is not found in the courts of law?

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and yes, that is really why we are having this debate. Ultimately we all believe that, whatever the outcome of the court case, Ford has a moral obligation and that if it does not meet that moral obligation we will continue to highlight the fact that it has failed its former employees. One of those former employees worked for Ford for 30 years before working for Visteon for only three months, but they have now suffered a significant loss in pension.

As I have said, the courts will test the legality, but the moral case stands for itself. Ford wanted out of this expensive business, and that is why it spun off Visteon. Ford talks about being a “family”, and the reason why its former employees feel so aggrieved is that, because they felt part of that “family”, they trusted their employer, Ford. Ford is a blue-chip firm with a history going back to before the first world war, and its employees were told that their pension was secure. The employees took that at face value. Of course, perhaps in hindsight they should have sought a little more clarity and explored what that promise meant, but they were allowed to take away the general impression that their rights were protected and that they were still part of the Ford “family”.

If those employees had looked a little more deeply and if they had considered the nightmare scenario of the business collapsing and the pension fund being underfunded, perhaps things might have turned out differently; perhaps they would not have transferred and perhaps it would have been more difficult for Visteon to spin off. But they did not do those things. They took Ford at its word and Visteon was floated off in a vessel that I believe was already holed below the waterline even though it was trying to make its way in the world.