Journals and magazines with statistics on company pensions affected by the 1995 Pensions Act.

BML

The 1995 Pensions Act deprived some members of company pensions of the same annual pension increase others in their company received. I am looking for information on how many companies as a percentage of all companies used the 1995 act to deprive their employees of an annual increase to their pension.  There other matters such as how many employees this affected that I would like to see. 

Marcon

Could you be more precise about the 'deprivation' you have in mind - especially which section of the Act you refer to?

xylophone

 especially which section of the Act you refer to?

S51?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05656/

Marcon

xylophone said:

 especially which section of the Act you refer to?

S51?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05656/

I'd wondered, but OP refers to 'deprive their employees of an annual increase to their pension' - S51 doesn't actually do that. I'd hoped the poster would respond to clarify their thinking - the post was couched in rather over-emotional terms and some clarity of what was actually stipulated in the Act might help them to understand that it wasn't quite as stark as they may fear.

BML

I joined a company in 1990 and left employment by reason of redundancy in 1993.  As I only had short service I knew that the pension would also be small. I didn’t check whether I was receiving an annual increase until recently when I discovering that I was not receiving an annual.  I asked the Pension department why this was so and they replied as follows.

“Under the Rules of the Plan, pensions earnt prior to 6 April 1997 do not receive increases in payment.  As you left pensionable service in 1993 your pension is entirely made up of pre 1997 service and therefore is not eligible for annual pension in payment increases.” 
I made further enquirers and found that this resulted from the 1995 Pensions Act.  

JoeCrystal

But as your pension department already said, it is the rule of the scheme at the time, so it is nothing to do with the 1995 Pensions Act. Did your scheme booklet at the time mention anything about the fact the pension will not be increased annually?

Linton

BML said:

I joined a company in 1990 and left employment by reason of redundancy in 1993.  As I only had short service I knew that the pension would also be small. I didn’t check whether I was receiving an annual increase until recently when I discovering that I was not receiving an annual.  I asked the Pension department why this was so and they replied as follows.

“Under the Rules of the Plan, pensions earnt prior to 6 April 1997 do not receive increases in payment.  As you left pensionable service in 1993 your pension is entirely made up of pre 1997 service and therefore is not eligible for annual pension in payment increases.” 
I made further enquirers and found that this resulted from the 1995 Pensions Act.  

There was no legal requirement for pensions to be inflation linked until 1995, so many were not.  The 1995 act could not have backed-dated the requirement  as those pension schemes were never financed to provide it.  So you havent lost anything because of the 1995 Act, you never had it anyway.

Marcon

Linton said:

BML said:

I joined a company in 1990 and left employment by reason of redundancy in 1993.  As I only had short service I knew that the pension would also be small. I didn’t check whether I was receiving an annual increase until recently when I discovering that I was not receiving an annual.  I asked the Pension department why this was so and they replied as follows.

“Under the Rules of the Plan, pensions earnt prior to 6 April 1997 do not receive increases in payment.  As you left pensionable service in 1993 your pension is entirely made up of pre 1997 service and therefore is not eligible for annual pension in payment increases.” 
I made further enquirers and found that this resulted from the 1995 Pensions Act.  

There was no legal requirement for pensions to be inflation linked until 1995, so many were not.  The 1995 act could not have backed-dated the requirement  as those pension schemes were never financed to provide it.  So you havent lost anything because of the 1995 Act, you never had it anyway.

Amazing how a bit of probing reveals a complete misunderstanding, as I'd wondered! Hopefully OP now understands that the 1995 Act has no bearing on the pension he is receiving.

westv

Prior to being taken over by the PPF my DB pension from a previous employer had in payment RPI increases up to 5% as far as I remember. Under the PPF there will be no in payment increases as it all refers to pre 97 service.

Brynsam

BML said:

I joined a company in 1990 and left employment by reason of redundancy in 1993.  As I only had short service I knew that the pension would also be small. I didn’t check whether I was receiving an annual increase until recently when I discovering that I was not receiving an annual.  I asked the Pension department why this was so and they replied as follows.

“Under the Rules of the Plan, pensions earnt prior to 6 April 1997 do not receive increases in payment.  As you left pensionable service in 1993 your pension is entirely made up of pre 1997 service and therefore is not eligible for annual pension in payment increases.” 
I made further enquirers and found that this resulted from the 1995 Pensions Act.  

Not sure of whom you made the enquiries, but either you misunderstood the answer, or they misunderstood the question/how legislation works. 

How would knowing the statistics help in any way? It won't give you any grounds to lobby for an increase.

BML

Marcon.  I'd wondered, but OP refers to 'deprive their employees of an annual increase to their pension' - S51 doesn't actually do that. I'd hoped the poster would respond to clarify their thinking - the post was couched in rather over-emotional terms and some clarity of what was actually stipulated in the Act might help them to understand that it wasn't quite as stark as they may fear.

BML.  I left employment by reason of redundancy in 1993 and as I only had short service I knew that the pension would also be small. I didn’t check whether I was receiving an annual increase until recently discovering and I found that I was not.  I asked the Pension department why this was so and they replied as follows.

“Under the Rules of the Plan, pensions earnt prior to 6 April 1997 do not receive increases in payment.  As you left pensionable service in 1993 your pension is entirely made up of pre 1997 service and therefore is not eligible for annual pension in payment increases.” I have no idea what S51 is or the poster that Marcon refers to. As for stating that the Act wasn’t quite as stark as they may fear the facts are as follows.

Over the last 27 years I have not received the annual increase to that pension after paying the same into it as other company pensioner did who have received annual increases. The post may have been couched in rather over-emotional terms but I wonder how Marcon would have reacted under those circumstances. 

JoeCrystal But as your pension department already said, it is the rule of the scheme at the time, so it is nothing to do with the 1995 Pensions Act. Did your scheme booklet at the time mention anything about the fact the pension will not be increased annually?

BML When I contacted the company and asked them what led to the situation I found myself in they replied as follows which shows that their actions had everything to do with the Act.

"Legislation dictates the level of increase that must be applied to pension benefits based on the period when they were accrued. For benefits accrued before 6 April 1997, there is no statutory requirement to increase the pension. I can confirm that this has been the case throughout your retirement." 

Linton said:  There was no legal requirement for pensions to be inflation linked until 1995, so many were not.  The 1995 act could not have backed-dated the requirement  as those pension schemes were never financed to provide it.  So you haven’t lost anything because of the 1995 Act, you never had it anyway.

Amazing how a bit of probing reveals a complete misunderstanding, as I'd wondered! Hopefully OP now understands that the 1995 Act has no bearing on the pension he is receiving.

Claiming that “those pension schemes were never financed to provide it.” Is irrelevant because the schemes in their entirety were never financed to provide it either yet they did but as agreed with the government of the day they dumped those prior to the Act which introduced annual increases.

BML  May I get back to the original purpose of raising the question of the 1995 Pensions where I stated,

“I am looking for information on how many companies as a percentage of all companies used the 1995 act to deprive their employees of an annual increase to their pension.  There other matters such as how many employees this affected that I would like to see.

1. Was it common practice prior to this legislation being passed for pension companies to pay an annual increase?

2. Was information made available to the appropriate Minister as to what the cost would have been to the pension companies were they not excused from paying these annual pension increases?

3.  Is information available showing what organisations as a percentage of all organisations responsible for employee pensions took advantage of the legislation to deny annual pension increases and if so where?

4.  I suspect that any decent organisation would not have taken advantage of the legislation to debar its pensioners from annual increases and wonder if such information is available to show how many people were adversely affected by this legislation?

5. Is information available anywhere showing as a percentage of all Pension departments what percentage took advantage of the legislation to not pay annual increases to pensions?

6. Was a presumed liability for paying those who were affected by this legislation at that time ever quantified?

7. How many Baxter Healthcare pensioners that were penalised by the legislation are still alive?