The UK government’s inaction regarding the loss of 1,000 pensions over 20 years ago has been criticised as “disgraceful” by a former steelworker. Staff at the Cardiff-based Allied Steel and Wire (ASW) plant saw their pensions disappear when the company went bankrupt in 2002. Although campaigners have won the right to 90% of their pensions, this has not risen year-on-year. The UK pensions minister has said it would be too expensive to assess what is owed, but John Benson, who lost his ASW pension, said the Department for Work and Pensions was “trying to just cheat us out of what we paid for.”
The campaign began when ASW collapsed and staff lost not only their jobs, but the pensions they had invested in for years. Following numerous protests, the UK government implemented a scheme that would ensure employees of companies like ASW would see up to 90% of their pensions reinstated. However, the payments have lost value over time as they are not indexed to inflation. Workers claim they are eligible for the payments to be linked to inflation, and made retrospective.
Hywel Williams MP, the work and pensions spokesperson for the Plaid Cymru party, described the situation as a betrayal of people who had “unjustly been denied their full pensions” for two decades. Williams has called on the DWP to evaluate changes to the value of pension payments that were not index-linked in relation to inflation since 2007 among pensioners of Allied Steel and Wire.
Paul Maynard, the pensions minister, has said that the information required to evaluate the debt was “not readily available” and would incur disproportionate costs, according to a letter he sent to Mr Benson. However, Maynard added that he was still “working on” the issue
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