Digital Equipment Ltd: Pension Scheme

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is an extra special pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe—I prepared a seven-minute speech, you suggested I might get five minutes and I now have 10. That is so unusual in this place.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson) on bringing this matter to the House for us to debate. I am pleased she has the time do so, as she is doubtless preparing for a series of suppers over the next couple of weeks to mark the special day set aside for Robert Burns. Had he been alive today, he would, I believe, have been a constituent of hers.

Other hon. Members have explained the background to this issue. The pension plan changed hands from Compaq, which acquired Digital Equipment Ltd, to Hewlett Packard when it acquired Compaq in 2002. Hon. Members have also highlighted the legislation that determines that payments prior to 1997 are not entitled to increases in line with inflation. I welcome all the contributions that have been made.

I confess that, until Wednesday of last week, I was not aware of this particular failure, which has resulted in what appears to be the unfair and inconsistent treatment of thousands of pensioners who have a defined-benefit pension with Hewlett Packard. Despite legislation being in place that states that pension providers are under no legal obligation to increase the value of a pension in line with inflation, we are facing a situation, not unlike that facing the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign, in which people find themselves at a disadvantage simply because they were born in a particular timeframe or had worked prior to particular legislation being introduced.

Through my research, I found that the average pension paid to Digital pensioners in 2002 was £6,008, which would now be worth £9,070 if it had kept in line with inflation—that is 50% more, and would go a long way in anybody’s home. As we have heard, when the pension plan was held by Digital Equipment Ltd and then Compaq, both companies made discretionary increases. However, once the plan was acquired by Hewlett Packard, it received only two token 1% rises, with no increases in the past 14 years. That is not good enough. The value of the pensioners’ money has decreased, the cost of living has increased and we once again face the crisis of vulnerable people facing increased difficulty and being on the verge of poverty in many cases.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The thought going through my mind is that, when I go back to my office, I find Parliament-supplied equipment made by Hewlett Packard. I also bought my own printers from Hewlett Packard. I am beginning to wonder whether I knew enough to regard it as a reputable firm that I should go on patronising.

[Alex Cunningham]

I certainly wonder the same thing; I have something to say to the Minister specifically on that—not about my personal choices or the hon. Gentleman’s, but about the Government’s.

Hewlett Packard can hide behind the law, and has for years, but that does not mean that what it is doing is right. When we—a group of north-east England MPs—meet representatives from Hewlett Packard a week on Monday, I intend to challenge them specifically on the decision. Despite being a large company with a substantial UK turnover, it is clearly shirking its responsibility to ensure that people who worked for a company that it took over receive the same level of support as before. Another parallel between this case and the plight of the WASPI women is that there has been no real opportunity for the people affected to make up for the shortfall in the value of their pension.

How has Hewlett Packard dealt with other pensioners in its group? Much, much better. Pensioners in all of Hewlett Packard’s European subsidiaries, except in the UK, have received regular cost of living increases. This is a case not of a business being unable to increase pensions in line with the cost of living, but of a large international corporation using a loophole in UK legislation to give it a window to not fulfil what is a moral duty. I wonder what its problem is with treating its British pensioners the same as others.

As we have heard, Hewlett Packard is not a struggling business that cannot make ends meet. It is actually the Government's largest IT supplier, and makes sales of more than a £l billion a year to the Government alone. It is a company that, in 2015, had revenues of $139 billion—not million—and profits of $7 billion. The UK Government spent £1.2 billion with the company in 2014-15, which was 25% of Hewlett Packard’s British turnover. Its highest-paid UK director received £1.64 million in 2014 and £920,000 in 2015. It would cost that company about half the cash paid to that one UK director to pay a cost of living increase this year—half the cash that one person earned in wages last year.

The pensioners affected served their time working for HP and the companies it took over. They thought they were safe in the knowledge that they had a pension and were doing everything they were supposed to. I believe the Minister should put pressure on Hewlett Packard, as I will a week on Monday, to fulfil its moral responsibility, although not a legal one, to ensure that those workers are treated fairly in retirement.

Are the Government really content with doing more than £1 billion-worth of business a year with a company that has cocked a snook at this group of British pensioners? I hope the Minister will agree that even though companies are not legally required to pay annual cost of living increases in line with inflation for workers who made contributions prior to 1997, it is a scandal that there are thousands of pensioners in this country right now whose pensions’ value has dropped significantly, and who are probably now relying on social security benefits to get by.