Pensions Bill

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak about amendment (a) to new clause 38, and new clause 24. I am also a signatory to new clauses 25 and 26. The debate is important to the 125,000 people who have been affected by the collapse of their pension schemes. The experience of my constituents who are former employees of Allied Steel and Wire is much in my mind as we debate the subject today. I, along with other hon. Members, have been campaigning for a long time to get justice for the Allied Steel and Wire workers and others throughout the country. In Cardiff, 893 employees from Allied Steel and Wire lost their pensions when the private company went bankrupt. All hon. Members have had experience of the utter misery that that caused and its awful effect on families. Many people have come to my surgery and spoken about the personal devastation that was brought upon them. Losing their jobs was one thing and losing their pensions came right on top of it. That was a devastating blow. Many had worked in the steel industry all their lives—and we all know that working in that industry is hard. Some people have never talked about the trauma of what happened to them. A woman came to my constituency office last week and said that her husband lost his job and his pension and had never spoken of it. The overwhelming horror of what happened to him has meant that he has never been able to talk about it. We are talking about those people’s lives today. It is important to acknowledge what the Government have done to respond to that devastation in people’s lives. The former employees, the unions, especially Community and Amicus, with which I have worked closely, and Members of Parliament, especially, at the beginning, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), led a campaign that resulted in setting up the Pension Protection Fund, which will protect pensions in that position from now on. That was a big step forward. I also applaud the Government’s establishment of the financial assistance scheme and their work to improve it. When it was originally set up, it applied only to members who had reached retirement age or were within three years of doing so. It was woefully inadequate to address the needs of all the pensioners. The pensions White Paper of 2006 extended the scheme to those within 15 years of retirement, with total funding of £2.3 billion, which the new clause increases to 80 per cent. of core benefits. The FAS has been gradually extended, but the process has been long and tortuous. It has taken five years and it has felt as though the campaigning of Members of Parliament, the unions and others forced the Government to improve the provision in the FAS. Nevertheless, they have done that. Many hon. Members, the Community and Amicus unions and I welcome the major step forward that the Government have taken in recognising that the FAS was not adequate to provide a decent income in retirement for the estimated 125,000 people who lost their pensions through no fault of their own. The new clause means that all those people will get some help. Some were previously excluded. In my constituency, there are people who had worked for 30 years but, until the new clause is enacted, are eligible for nothing because they started work at an early age—some at 14—in the steelworks in Cardiff and were only 54 when they lost their jobs. They were thus not eligible for any of the benefits. Now all of them will get something. That is a big step forward, but we need to go further. Amendment (a) has the support of the Community and Amicus unions and I pay tribute to their work. They took the case to the European Court of Justice and have worked tirelessly on the issue. The new clause would ensure that those who lost their pensions before the establishment of the PPF receive the same support as those who benefit it from it in future. Amendment (a) does not prescribe where the funding for the PPF level of benefit should come from. Much discussion has taken place about how the £8 billion over 50 years will work out—how much it will cost and whether it will stretch further than we think. I do not know the answer, but there have been queries about how far the money will go.