Roger Sainsbury and Terry Monk speak to the General Committee of the parliamentarians interested in the Pension Schemes Bill. You can watch it here with Roger Sainsbury and Terry Monk speaking on behalf of those deprived of their pension , eroded by the lack of revaluation.

You can watch the two “of the oldest people in the room” who speak well and with dignity about the deprivation of those with frozen pensions since the 1990s.

Their part of the afternoon begins after a relief break at 16.45 and ends at 17.15.

Roger Sainsbury

Terry Monk

The present Chancellor used the last budget to make the PPF less an asset but a liability and this has had a negative impact on the impact of  being paid pensions from FAS. for the people Sainsbury and Monk represent. I know that the PPF as a major consideration for this Government (one of the reasons for excess caution on DB).

I hope that many of this blog’s readers will watch these two gentlemen. They have received some good news in the past few days in the past few days. The PPF have been re-working the costs of restoring indexation for those being paid pensions from FAS. The PPF has recently  calculated  that he cost to the PPF is between £3.5 and £3.9bn rather than the previous estimate of £5.9bn.

I know that it was in the Pension Minister’s mind to include restoration from the PPF in the Pension Schemes Bill. I know this because he said he wanted to in the Edinburgh speech to the PLSA in March. The PPF has substantial surplus today and I hope that the Pension Minister and those who work with him will take the 30 minutes given to these two to hear their case.

Shadow Treasury spokesperson Mark Garnier made his support clear.

Mark Garnier

The worry is that the fall in the cost of recompense is because of the diminution of the numbers owed money in restitution. Listen to the two explain how many they estimate will have died a year , a month and even on the day when this General Committee meeting took place.

It was good to see Lord Brixton (Bryn Davies) in the audience – a visitor from the upper house. It is important that we are decent to those who have come before us as well as those who are yet to retire and I fear that the changes to PPF accounting in last autumn’s budget scuppered the original plans in Torsten Bell’s mind. Perhaps the news that the cost to the PFF and this nation’s liabilities have been recalculated downwards will influence him to make the change he hoped for.

We cannot wait much longer for a positive announcement, there is a finite nature to the problem.

Thanks to Terry and Roger for the understanding they gave not just to those in the Committee Room but to watchers then and now. I am clearer in my mind about their case and support it.