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11.9 am
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich): I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister for not having been here at the beginning of the debate. It is seldom an excuse in the House of Commons to say that things were going so fast that I was not keeping up with the excitement in the Chamber. What my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) is doing is tremendously important and I congratulate him.
It is not clear how the Government can so consistently think that they can get away with the most outrageous behaviour without anyone noticing. I often forget how brazen they are. Their sheer brass neck amazes me.
I am an individual member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Many members of my union are busmen who are directly affected by the pension scam--I use the word scam advisedly, because that is what it is--but I must make it clear that I do not benefit from the pension fund, nor have I ever contributed to it. That does not mean, however, that I am not outraged that the Government's behaviour has been allowed to go almost unremarked.
Having set up a parliamentary commissioner--or ombudsman, as we call him for convenience--to look into the correct administration of the business of government, after a clear decision that their behaviour on the bus companies pension funds was not only bad administration but a total breach of faith, would any other Government in the world have said, "Thank you very much. We have taken note of what you have said. Now if you want to get your money back, you've got to sue us."?
Because of their incredibly narrow and tiny attitude towards the sale of state assets, the Government were prepared to use the pension funds of bus companies to encourage private companies to take over assets. They were then prepared to go to the trustees of the pension funds, knowing that the law puts them into a straitjacket--correctly; no one wants pension fund trustees to be able to do whatever they like--and tell them, "This is a deal you can accept or you can't accept. Either you commit suicide publicly or you accept a deal that says that we
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I am in perpetual correspondence with the Minister. I sometimes feel that it would save a lot of time if we had a direct line between his office and mine, because I am constantly questioning him on the behaviour of the Department of Transport in relation to other people's assets. The Minister knows that the pension funds were built up by contributions from some of the poorest paid members of the industry. The transport industry does not overpay those who work long hours in difficult conditions. I assure the Minister that busmen and buswomen are not among the multi-millionaires of the United Kingdom. Their assets, built up slowly over a long period by them and their employers, were used as large bags of sweeties to encourage people to come in and take over the assets of the state bus companies.
The Government's behaviour raises all sorts of questions. Would any other organisation say, "I'll use your money to tell you to sue me."? The Government are using taxpayers' money to enable the Government to be sued. At every level, coming and going, the taxpayer pays. That is a basic fact, in case anybody had not noticed. It is not the Government's money; it is the taxpayer's money. They constantly tell us, "Oh, we don't have any money, it belongs to the taxpayers." It certainly does. What is the Department doing with that money? It says, "The ombudsman has found against us, but we have no intention of carrying out what the ombudsman has said unless we are sued." Where is the money for that legal process to come from? From the taxpayer. We have a violent circle of complete nonsense, in which the taxpayer is supposed to pay.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North raised some detailed and important points, and I have no intention of repeating what he said. The Government's effrontery amazes me. They have an extraordinary ability to take my breath away. They continually do things that I though that no one would have the nerve to do, and then they do it again. To quote a classic case, I wrote to the Minister just before Christmas asking him about the pension funds of a number of different establishments--the National Bus Company, the British Airports Authority, the privatised ports and British Rail. I hope on another occasion to be able to spell out in detail that what the Government have done to the busmen is nothing compared with what they have done to people in the rail industry and some others.
This is not a new issue--it is plainly on the statute book and it has been argued time and again, but the Government are saying, "We will have two of our members appointed as directors. They will not have any connection with the people next door. We will not influence them. Indeed, we will not even know the legal opinions that have been given to them." I have much more faith in individual civil servants than I have in the Minister--I hope that he does not take that too personally. It is extremely difficult for people outside to understand the duality of function of those employees of the Department. It would have been far better if the Government had been prepared to arrange a different structure.
Why are there no trade union representatives of the work force among the trustees? What is to stop the Minister from accepting trustees from the Transport and General Workers Union and the RMT, which have members who have contributed to the scheme and are directly affected by the decisions? Indeed, who will reimburse the unfortunate man who brought the case? As far as we know, he has been pushed aside without being reimbursed. In effect, he has been told, "Thank you very much. We have seen all that and we shall put it right in so far as we are forced to do so, but we shall do no more unless we are pushed into a corner."
It is clear that when the Government realised that all state organisations had large pension funds, they said to private buyers, "We can discuss certain matters openly, but you must bear in mind that all these establishments have very large pension funds to which you will have access after the sale." Some rail franchises were based on the assumption that private companies would get their hands on pension funds after taking over the franchise. It is nothing new for the Government to incorporate in their sales policy access to other people's assets.
The Government have offered no explanation. Does not the fact that an individual hon. Member has had to raise the subject in private Members' time to allow a full debate on the Floor of the House demonstrate the Government's attitude? They are certainly not prepared to go into detail in their own time and spell out the implications of their action.
Whatever important and detailed questions are raised this morning, the Minister has to answer one basic charge. The Government sold the bus companies knowing that they had large pension funds. They made a proposition to the trustees of those pension funds that they knew they could not refuse. It was almost a Mafia-style proposition. When it was accepted, individual members of the fund
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The Minister intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North, saying that he hoped that there was no question of our criticising individual civil servants. Of course there is not, nor has there ever been, but the Minister knows that one of the strongest arguments that the House has with the City of London on any kind of control of funds is that there should be clear distinctions in any company, regardless of day-to-day operation, between the activities of anyone with a vested interest in operating on both sides of the fence. That is why the House has frequently had to change legislation on directors' functions in recent years.
When the Pensions Ombudsman issued his draft determination . . . steps were taken within the Department to ensure that those officials who were Directors of the company were separated from, and took no part in, the Department's consideration of this subject."
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