Sir Julian Lewis: The Minister has indeed been most accessible, and I am extremely grateful to him for the meeting he held with members of the ExxonMobil pensioners group. I am still being lobbied very hard by ExxonMobil pensioners who are concerned that whereas changes introduced in the Budget will benefit members of the FAS [Financial Assistance Scheme] and PPF [Pension Protection Fund] schemes, private defined-benefit scheme members will not benefit. He knows far more about the subject than I do, but can he not see that there is a feeling that they are being discriminated against? Is there nothing he can offer to make them feel somewhat more included in the beneficial steps being taken for members of other schemes?
[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Torsten Bell): I thank the hon. Gentleman for that and for our conversations on this matter in recent months. Although I think it is completely reasonable that people would feel like that – so would many of us if we had seen the high inflation of recent years eat into our non-index-linked pension payments – let me explain the consistency of the Government’s position. We are providing pre-’97 indexation on compensation relating to pensions now held within the PPF to those who were in schemes that did provide for indexation. There is no question of retrospectively changing the entitlement within the schemes; we are simply requiring that the compensation within the PPF and the FAS recognises that the schemes that people were in did previously recognise the need for indexation.
Other schemes within PPF and outside the PPF, including the one that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, did not provide for indexation in their scheme rules. He is right to say that, on those matters, the changes that I have outlined today on the PPF do not provide relief. I have gone on to say that because of the changes we are bringing forward in the surplus rules, I think the trustees – as was discussed with some of his trustees – do have more ability and more leverage with which to ask for those discretionary increases, but I completely appreciate that that is different in form from the compensation indexation that we are providing within the PPF.]
Sir Julian Lewis: The problem, as the Minister knows from our meeting, is that the trustees are rather hemmed in by not having the leverage or the freedom to act if the company itself – particularly if it is headquartered abroad – is disinclined to pass on any surpluses that it might have available.
[Torsten Bell: I recognise the right hon. Member’s point. I think the level of pessimism may be overstated. My view is that our changes on surplus, which put trustees clearly in the driving seat, provide for more ability for trustees to seek to change that balance of power within their relationship. I do not want to prejudge the individual discussions between all trustees and their employers – those will be different in different circumstances – but trustees are in a stronger position given the changes on surplus release that we are introducing through this Bill. But I am not pretending for a second that that solves overnight the points that the right hon. Member is making.]