Trawlermen’s Pensions

Austin Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) on securing this debate and on the fight he has put up, and indeed initiated, on behalf of the fishermen. Icelandic fishing finished in 1976, and the middle water fishing that went out of Grimsby finished in the ’80s with the laying up of the cat class British United Trawlers vessels, and the industry has been in abeyance as a powerful force since. It is a tragedy and a scandal that this matter has not been cleared up, so many years after the death of the distant water fishing industry. We are also still fighting for compensation for fishermen who did not receive it under the two schemes operated by the Labour Government.

The fact is that the pension scheme was appalling. It was badly administered and badly run, and the fishermen were treated with total contempt by the owners. The owners had to set up a scheme, but set up the meanest scheme possible. It was run inadequately first of all by Lowndes, which became Noble Lowndes. It then passed in a series of shuffles to General Accident, and finished up with Norwich Union, which promptly changed its name to Aviva.

My attempts to grapple with the problem began in the early ’80s. Some people were allowed to withdraw their pensions, but some were refused. I took up some of the more difficult cases with the Office for Pensions Administration, which investigated the scheme and found that the records were in an appalling state. The company did not know to whom it was due to pay pensions. It had no records of their addresses or dependants, and it made no attempt to contact them to say that there was money to be collected on their behalf. It was not until pressure was brought to bear by my right hon. Friend, working with the fishing port MPs, that we got a response. To be fair, Norwich Union, and subsequently Aviva, has done its best to contact those concerned, working with the mission and the port MPs, and putting adverts in local papers. A large number of people have come forward to make claims, but, as my right hon. Friend has said, there remains a substantial number who have not been found who are still owed money—substantial sums in some cases; small sums in most cases—by the scheme.

The time has come for the scheme to be wound up and for the Minister to exercise whatever power he has. It is time for the company, working with the fishing port MPs, to wind up the scheme. We have decided that the money could best be paid to fishing charities, to support fishing families in desperate need. That would be a fair use of it. However, after all this time, the company owes us the decency of adding a substantial sum in compensation to the sums already in scheme to be wound up, because here we are, after 34 years, still arguing for justice for the fisherman. That could have happened to no other section of our society. It is appalling that we have to do this, but let us now get it done. Let us get this monstrous scheme wound up.