Sir Julian Lewis: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I have been contacted by three retired members of ExxonMobil, which has a very large refinery in my constituency. I was reluctant to name the firm because I have not had a chance to ask for its side of the story, but the three letters tell me that exactly the same thing has been happening. Those three people were given no discretionary rise this January, and it was then modestly reinstated after protests were made. There is clearly some sort of co-ordinated effort, and not in a good way, exactly as the right hon. Gentleman describes

[Mr Alistair Carmichael: It pains me to say it, but I think the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. What might have started with the oil and gas companies is clearly going much wider. …]

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Sir Julian Lewis: I wonder whether the Chair of the Select Committee shares my concern that when those schemes go wrong, it seems to take an interminable time to get any form of resolution. I have in mind a scheme that I am sure he is familiar with: the Atomic Energy Authority Technology pension scheme. The Government gave strong guarantees from the Dispatch Box that transferring into that scheme would give benefits roughly similar to those of remaining in the original Atomic Energy Authority scheme, but that did not happen. I first quoted the concerns of my constituent, Dr Keith Brown, in 2016. The most recent answer that I received to a question on this subject was:

“This is a complex issue requiring further consideration”

between the DWP and the Cabinet Office. I first raised the matter in 2016, but the Government are still saying that in 2024.

[Sir Stephen Timms: The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. That is certainly a very long-running case, and the Select Committee has recently been looking at a notable pension scam case – the Norton Motorcycle Company pension schemes, which was a straightforward scam – that has been running for years and years. He is right that we need to find ways to speed up some of these processes, because the victims in these cases have their lives really blighted. We are allowing that blight to last for years and years, and that needs to change. …]

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Sir Julian Lewis: My hon. Friend did say that things had moved on since January. May I gently remind him that it was in January that he told the Work and Pensions Committee that he was waiting to hear from his officials who were in discussions with the Cabinet Office about the AEA Technology pension scandal? He has since been saying that there is no timeline for how these people will be advised of appropriate redress. Does he expect there to be no timeline between now and the general election, or can they expect a definite answer at some point before then?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Paul Maynard): My right hon. Friend has pre-empted a topic that I was about to come to, because I could see that it was going to come up in the discussion on the Select Committee report. I have now been to see the Cabinet Office Minister with my officials, and my officials then went back for a second visit. So although I cannot give him a timeline, I can say that I am motoring this issue along as rapidly as I can. When I say that this is complex, it is because it is complex; it is not merely because that is a useful and convenient word to cover a multitude of things. We continue to work as fast as we can to try to reach a conclusion. I hear the points that he has made to me, both in this place and outside, about wanting to draw this to a conclusion as best we can. …]