AEA Pension Scheme

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on bringing this—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Blackford, I should have said that there is five minutes each for you and the Opposition spokesman and 10 minutes for the Minister, so if you could limit your remarks to five minutes, that would be great. Thank you.

[Ian Blackford]

I will do so, Ms Dorries, as I was intending to.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset on securing this important debate. He has been assiduous in pushing the case, and his suggestion this afternoon of looking at amending the law as it affects the ombudsman certainly has some merit.

I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). He has very accurately shown what happened with the advice that was given, some of the deficiencies that were there, and the possible interference from AEAT in that process and the advice that was given.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) said in his concluding remarks, we need to remember that pensions are a contract, not a benefit. Those who have paid in to pension schemes deserve to get their due entitlement. It is the responsibility of the UK Government to ensure that there is confidence in the pensions industry throughout the UK. We all look forward to a time when people can save in pensions, secure in the knowledge that they will get their due entitlement. We need to have that confidence, and it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that the Pensions Regulator and the ombudsman discharge their obligations to ensure that the consumer interest is protected.

It is clear that pension scheme members in this case, as we heard last week in a debate in the main Chamber on the BHS scheme, are not fully protected—they are not protected to the extent that they should be. Lessons must be learned and appropriate action taken. Whether that is done through the ombudsman or the regulator is a moot point and we can come back to it in due course. What needs to be remarked on today is that, with the AEAT scheme ending up in the Pension Protection Fund, those who worked for the company when it was in the public sector have, among others, lost pension entitlement. The Government cannot walk away from their obligation to what were public sector workers. That is not acceptable.

It is clear from its conduct that the UK Government Actuary’s Department has ducked its responsibility to the AEAT pension scheme members. Liability has to lie somewhere. As discussed in a Westminster Hall debate on this topic in March last year, the Government Actuary’s Department was the author of a leaflet designed to inform pension scheme members of their next course of action in the light of the creation of AEAT. According to evidence given to the Pensions Ombudsman Service, that leaflet suggested three options, but also said that it was unlikely that the UKAEA scheme would fail or that

“the benefit promise made by either the UKAEA scheme or the AEAT scheme would ever be broken.”

That was in my book an inducement and assurance to the scheme members. Who will stand behind the scheme members who were made those promises? Will the Minister accept that the Government at least have a moral and ethical responsibility?