David Boyd is a member of the NFOP British Steel Branch,  The National Federation of Occupational Pensioners has over 30,000 members and provides  a voice for people in retirement.

This is his obituary of his pension,  being a pensioner of the British Steel Pension Scheme. I publish it on his behalf

The Death of the British Steel Pension Scheme

The death has been confirmed of the British Steel Pension Scheme ( called hereinafter ‘Pen’) after a very long and painful illness involving many major surgical interventions.

Pen was born in Whitehall, London on 7 July 1969, the offspring of the union of his parents The British Steel Corporation, in 1967. He grew rapidly into a strapping adult, at his peak effectively managing assets of around £15 billion for well over 125,000 steel industry members and winning many national awards for his prowess.

Unfortunately, Pen’s parents hit hard times and, in 1988, they themselves were formally fully-disowned by the Government of the day and floated as a commercial limited company. Pen’s parents’ fortunes continued severely to decline, and in 1999 they merged with a Dutch steelmaker to form the Corus Group but this failed to halt the decline process resulting in the troubled Corus being taken over by the Indian-based industrial conglomerate Tata in 2007.

This acquisition proved a financial disaster for Tata too, who in March 2016 announced that Tata Steel UK had lost £2 billion in the preceding five years and that the company faced insolvency. Tata were then still responsible for Pen but applied to the Pensions Regulator to decouple their company from Pen on the grounds that continued responsibility for Pen in his present form would inevitably lead to Tata UK’s insolvency.

This led to Pen undergoing major amputations with the stated aim of ensuring his future survival without any support from Tata UK. The most significant of these was that pensioners with pensions earned before 1997 were barred from all future routine pension increases. Inflation-proofing increases generally were also significantly cut-down. Very many pensioners reluctantly voted for this surgery to happen as the only solution presented to them to keep Pen alive in something at least close to his present form.

The surgery took place but then Pen’s guardians stated their intention to kill Pen off provided his financial assets could be grown sufficiently to interest an insurance company in taking over his legacy in return for securing pensioner benefits (as revised) and creaming-off the almost-certain and considerable future financial surpluses  This they have achieved, and they put Pen to death on 31 March 2026. They have chosen to issue no obituary nor any celebration of Pen’s rather illustrious and notable life, so this attempts in some way to rectify that omission.

The outcome of all this is that former workers many of whom have spent a lifetime in often-arduous and dangerous work cease in any meaningful way to be British Steel Pensioners and to be members of a pension scheme that was run for their mutual financial benefit. Rather, they become merely a liability on the books of a vast insurance company.  Most cease to have any effective involvement either in the payment of their pensions or the wider community of pensioners.

To the author of this at least, that’s indeed a great big shame which has only benefited Tata Steel and the insurance company.

[end of obituary and comment by David Boyd]

Do the pensioners know what else was discussed?

I have asked David if he was aware as a pensioner of the choices that were looked at by the Trustees and by the sponsor.

Over the last few months, we have been fighting for employers , trustees and members to see an actuarial document called the TAS300. This gives the figures for the various alternatives available for the scheme

These include:

• Buy in and buy out with an insurer
• Transfer of sponsor (as Stagecoach recently did with its scheme)
• Transfer to a superfund
• Continuing with the existing sponsor

I’m not sure if you have ever heard of this document, let alone seen your scheme’s or been privy to the decision made and why alternatives were rejected (or perhaps not considered)

This is David Boyd’s response

No, wasn’t at all aware of the actuarial document you mention – and coincidentally one of my NFOP British Steel Branch colleagues mentioned only last evening the apparent lack of other options for the Scheme’s future.

---