Martin Freeman is a long-time friend so I’m loathe to call him on pension issues but I’d like him to look at this photo and ask him what he sees.

Is he looking at a group of over-privileged pensioners eager to exploit an inter-generational transfer. Or is he looking at four ordinary people who happen to be asking for promises on pension increases promised – to be honoured.

For the record – they are L to R:

Jeff Wiltshire – BP Llandarcy & Magnus
Nigel Briggs – BP Tankers, Llandarcy & Baglan Bay
Kelvin Bond – BP Llandarcy, Baglan Bay & Coryton
Mike Slingsby – BP Llandarcy, Baglan Bay, Sunbury + Amoco MH

Four guys who’ve worked their lives for BP and are now asking why BP aren’t paying the inflation linked increases they’ve been promised.  None would have looked out of place on the Kippax Martin!

Here’s a bit of detail

Nigel & Kelvin look after the “Friends of BP Baglan Bay” Facebook Group and Jeff & Kelvin look after the “Memories of BP LLandarcy” Facebook Group and they’ve all been actively involved in the BP Pensioner Group campaign for the last year.

Turns out their  combined ages are 292 years with combined BP Service of 145 years – the common link being BP Llandarcy in their  early BP years.

Their BP careers overlap in so many areas – Apprentices, Lube Oils, Queens Dock, Chlorine, Alcohols, Cracker, Shiftwork etc – a lot of memories to discuss but sadly they talked about the number of ex colleagues they had lost recently as well as the large number of BP Pensioners who still live in the local area.

Paying pensions – it’s what we do.

The point of occupational pension schemes was to provide a healthy and long retirement to pensioners. It was not to de-risk these liabilities through getting them to buy-out their pension liabilities through CETVs, or pension increase exchanges, it was to maximise their after-work wages with the money the trustees could make for them.

Martin comments in his otherwise excellent participation in Darren and Nico’s podcast that we “as pension people” can point out to  “these people” that they are not entitled to discretionary increases, which is what BP are repeatedly doing but they are doing so against the wishes of the trustees who point out that there is money in the scheme to pay these increases and a promise to pay when surpluses are around.

Both Martin and I  have been around 30+ years,( me 40+) and can remember when trustees and employers celebrated being able to award a full cost of living increase.

Now , employers consider such increases the picking of the shareholder’s pocket (or maybe a negative consideration for the Rem. Co).

This is what confuses people like Jeff, Nigel, Kelvin and Mike and it confuses me. At some point we stopped enjoying paying pensions and started considering it a burdensome obligation. Members of pension schemes like those above chose to work for companies who had a positive attitude to pensions.

On Friday , I listened to a a member of the Royal Mail pension scheme explain that he chose to be a postman for the pension he’d get after work. People did!

Now we want people to engage with their pension even though people don’t get one. Is it any wonder that the children of Jeff, Nigel , Kelvin and Mike may be feeling a little disillusioned.

People should celebrate the payment of discretionary  increases , whether through the triple lock or because a scheme has the capacity to pay them. They should call out employers who refuse to sanction trustees’ requests to pay discretionary pension increases –  as happens at BP.

There are calls on the pension podcast for pensions to fall under the FCA’s consumer duty, and the FCA to be subject to the Consumer’s Duty. You do not need the Consumer Duty to want to pay pensions, you need a positive mindset to pensioners. The lawyers will argue that “discretionary means unnecessary”,  but sometimes “discretionary” means “when you can”.

I want everybody who saves into a pension plan to be offered a pension and I want pension schemes to be ambitious to pay more. Martin , my old friend, I am sure you don’t disagree.