WORK and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith has agreed to consider proposals by Sheerness steelworkers to make a compensation payment to their crippled pension fund.

Mr Smith met a delegation which included Keith Plowman, chairman of the Pensions Fund Action Group, and Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Derek Wyatt in London today.

Mr Wyatt said that Mr Smith had listened to the group’s proposals for retrospective compensation for the fund.

Local steelworkers employed by Allied Steel & Wire at the time the firm went into receivership lost out on pension rights. Since then the ASW pension fund members have been at the forefront of a battle to transform the pensions system and get a fairer deal for workers in final salary schemes.

Mr Wyatt said that ASW pension fund members and other groups of people who had lost out when their companies went into liquidation could be compensated from pension trusts, from ‘orphan’ funds that are no longer being used or from the taxpayer.

He estimated that the compensation could amount to £65 million. The delegation is due to met a civil servant soon to discuss further details.