AEA Technology Pension Scheme

Debate between Steve Webb and Lord Haselhurst

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.