Pensions Minister blocks deal for ‘unjustly treated’ steel pensioners

Pensions Minister Torsten Bell. Photo Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire

Martin Shipton

Pensions Minister and Swansea West MP Torsten Bell has been criticised after he blocked a legal amendment that could have delivered justice to Welsh steelworkers whose pensions were cut when the firm that employed them crashed in 2002.

Campaigners have tried to get full compensation for the money they lost when Allied Steel and Wire (ASW) went bust.

Despite the UK Government’s introduction of the Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) and the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to provide some relief, contributions made by workers to their pensions before April 1997 have not been fully inflation proof. This has left many ASW pensioners out of pocket and unable to realise the secure retirement they were promised.

Other workers have lost out too, including some former miners.

Amendments 

Plaid Cymru tabled amendments to the Pension Schemes Bill, which is going through the House of Commons, that would have provided full compensation to the retired workers.

But Mr Bell, who is managing the bill through Parliament, told MPs on the committee scrutinising it: “New clauses 18 and 19 [proposed by Plaid MP Ann Davies] would not work. The new clauses as drafted would apply to subsets of the PPF population. Some pensioners would receive indexation, and some would not. The same flaws in the new clauses apply to FAS.

“We will definitely be opposing the new clauses, but that is without regard to the wider questions,.”

A spokesperson for Plaid Cymru said: “We are undeterred in our aim to ensure that pensioners like former ASW workers receive the justice they deserve. Ann Davies plans to submit similar amendments for the bill’s Report Stage.”

‘Fair’

John Benson, one of the leading steel pension campaigners who himself worked for ASW, said: “The amendments tabled by Ann Davies were fair and affordable, and were also supported by members of the Scrutiny Committee.

“Sadly this Labour Pensions Minister made ridiculous statements as to why he rejected these amendments. So much for what sees itself as the only party in Westminster that believes in social justice, even telling us in February, at a meeting at the Treasury secured by Rhys ab Owen MS, that what happened to us wasn’t right.

“If it wasn’t right, why hasn’t he fixed it and stopped the niticking, I know I have said it countless times, but the late and well respected [former Labour shadow minister] Jack Dromey told me personally shortly before he sadly passed away that Labour’s front bench were going to do all that was possible to get our pensions restored,

“Then Keir Starmer had a reshuffle, Jack was moved to another department and suddenly there was a solid brick wall of silence from Labour ministers. It was disgraceful.

“[Former Conservative Pensions Minister] Paul Maynard who we also met at the DWP, agreed with us that Gordon Brown’s unfair tax grab on occupational pensions from 1997 till 2010, £238 billion in total, failed to put in safeguards after the Maxwell Pension Scandal, as well as other successive UK governments’ monumental failures, were all major factors in why we were not receiving the pensions we paid for. He said he would do all he could to help: he was true to his word, and kept in touch with me personally giving me updates, but no cast iron promises, yet working to secure a deal.

“He then contacted me after the election on July 4 2024 to say there was a deal on the table – not perfect – but a deal had been agreed with the DWP and Treasury, Rishi Sunak then called the election, in came Labour, and that deal was dead in the water. It’s disgraceful and shameful.

“As we have seen since the election, and I will say it how I feel, Labour attained power with monumental lies and dishonesty, and this Pensions Minister is making excuses, and time wasting, not to pay us what we paid for, to his and this Labour government’s shame – playing politics with people’s lives and retirement dreams. Of those who are still alive, the majority of us are in our 60s, 70s and 80s, and time is not on our side.

“We need a meeting with the Pensions Minister. If there is not a measure accepted like Ann’s in the Pensions Bill, how many years will it take for any other bill to go through Parliament – possibly many years

“We need closure, but we also need the pensions we paid for – and to have them backdated.”