Click through these slides to find out what happened to our pensions...
Some bullet points...
What happened?
• AEA Technology was formed in 1996 by the privatisation of part of UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority).
• 90% of eligible pension scheme members transferred their pensions into a “mirror image” scheme set up for this purpose by AEA Technology.
• We were persuaded to do this by government assurances to Parliament about the safety of the scheme, and specific, unique advice provided to us by the Government Actuary.
• Nobody told us that the government guarantee, which was a term of the UKAEA scheme, was not a term of the so-called “mirror image” AEA Technology scheme.
• In 2012 AEA Technology entered a pre-pack administration, and ditched its pension scheme. (The successor company is still trading profitably.)
Why we lost money
• The pension scheme was in deficit and in 2016 it entered the PPF.
• UKAEA (and AEA Technology) scheme benefits were linked to RPI. But PPF benefits, earned before 1997, have NO inflation protection at all!
• (Please note that our campaign is not about PPF benefits)
How much have we lost?
• PPF payments are currently 40% lower than the UKAEA scheme would have paid, and this is decreasing every year.
• The average individual will lose £60,000 (in 2022 money); some much more. The total is about £75M.
• (The government received £224M from the privatisation in 1996, worth about £550M today).
How many people are involved?
• There were 1245 members of the scheme in 2016