As mentioned in recent HPPA newsletter and as some members asked for a template/guide, here is a suggested communication to your MP – you can
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One Response
FYI – this is the reply from my local MP
Good morning
Thank you for contacting me about pension arrangements for Hewlett Packard (HP) workers.
Pension schemes have an obligation to uprate any pension accruals built up after 6th April 1997 in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), subject to a cap of five per cent. For any pension built up after 6 April 2005, that cap is 2.5 per cent. However, schemes do not have to increase any part of a pension that was built up before 6 April 1997.
The exception to this is for any schemes that were contracted out of the additional State Pension and are required to provide a Guaranteed Minimum Pension, worth at least as much as the State Pension you would have built up if you had not been ‘contracted out’; any accruals built up after 6 April 1988 must be uprated by law by CPI, subject to a three per cent cap.
It is important that schemes are able to plan for the long term and remain secure and sustainable. I appreciate your frustration that your scheme is choosing not to uprate above the legal requirements, but it is meeting its statutory obligations, and it is not appropriate for Ministers to comment on or intervene in the decisions of individual schemes.
I understand that it is the HP Pensions Association’s view that schemes should be required to uprate in line with the Retail Prices Index (RPI) instead of CPI. The CPI measure reflects the spending of pensioners far better than the RPI measure. The CPI also uses a methodology that is a more accurate reflection of how consumers, including pensioners, respond to price rises, than the methodology employed in the RPI. Schemes may choose to uprate by RPI, but that is a decision for individual schemes.
Thank you for highlighting the debate on the 2nd. My diary for that day is not finalised but I have made a note of the event.
Thank you again for contacting me on this issue, I have noted your strength of feeling on this issue.
Kind regards
Steve
Rt Hon Stephen Barclay MP
Member of Parliament for North East Cambridgeshire