So, this issue has been going on for many, many years. The workers at Allied Steel and Wire in Cardiff first found themselves facing a loss of their pensions in 2002. ASW was a big employer in Cardiff, and it’s easy to forget now, with the changes that have taken place in this city, how we did attract those big industrial employers. Some of the workers here today worked at ASW for 40 years prior to its collapse. They had paid into pensions that they assumed were going to be safe. They believed that they would be rewarded for their years of hard work with a retirement pension that would reflect their years of service, and they were wrong.

I understand that this is a debate that we've had before in this Assembly. In fact, I set up a cross-party group with many of you in this Chamber in the last Assembly term to try and grapple with this issue. And I also understand that this is not a devolved issue. I genuinely would hope that if it were a devolved issue, we would have corrected this injustice and that we would have done something very, very different indeed. But it isn’t, and the point of this debate here today is to try and work with the campaigners and to raise this up the political agenda again. I’ve said in numerous debates that we've had—be it on international affairs, be it on issues that are non-devolved—that we have to show moral leadership on these issues if we can’t make the political decisions here in Wales.

Now, when I was involved with the former Visteon pensions dispute—or Ford, as many of the campaigners at the time would have called it—I and others said that a pension was a salary deferred. It is not a cushy bonus, it is not a severance payment, it is not a golden parachute. It is a worker contribution deferred salary to ensure security and stability in old age. We all expect that. We all want that. In fact, that’s what we were debating in the previous debate here today, about how we want that respect when we are all older. But why do we not do it in this regard to ASW workers who deserve the right to have that pension? So, for people such as ASW pensioners, the Visteon workers, or those involved with Equitable Life and so many other companies who have lost part of their pensions, this is what we should call it; we should call it theft by those companies who take the well-earned salaries, the well-earned pensions out of the pockets of the people that they should have been supporting. And we should keep that in mind throughout this debate.

I think it’s worth going through the timeline, very briefly, of this campaign, so we can remind ourselves just how much of a tough slog it’s been for those campaigners. So, ASW collapsed and went into receivership in 2002. The majority of the workers were made redundant, and although the plant was acquired by the Spanish firm Celsa a year later, it was too late for many of those previously employed. It emerged during the course of talks between ASW, the then Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government that there was a £21 million shortfall in the company pension funds. Despite a buyer being found for the facility, this did not include a return of guaranteed pension for workers made redundant. Eventually, most workers were offered around 40 per cent of their expected pension value—nothing at all close to what they deserved. So, a campaign was started, and many believed it had been successful when the then UK Labour Government announced the financial assistance scheme and, a year later, the pension protection fund.

Now, it’s easy to forget that, in 2002, the current system we have did not exist. At the time, there was a growing spectre of so-called wind-ups—workers no longer being paid the pensions they were promised and paid into based on length of service and their final salary at retirement, instead receiving whatever the schemes could afford to pay after the pensions of existing pensioners had been secured. The point of a wind-up was a sharp and immediate cost-cutting measure on the backs of workers, stealing from the workers, some of whom had paid into the pension schemes from many, many years. Tens of thousands of workers across the UK in various industries were affected in some way by closures, by companies and how they collapsed, and that was how their pensions were treated so disrespectfully.

So, the fact that the ASW workers’ strong and public campaign, backed by people such as Ros—now Baroness—Altmann, was successful in changing the law and introducing Government-backed pension security schemes is a huge achievement. Members here today, I know, will shudder to think of what might have happened to large numbers of Welsh workers had a scheme like the PPF not been set up, however imperfect that scheme is. But the ASW workers have not been given a fair share or fair treatment by successive UK Governments, despite the hard work of campaigners. So, the situation remains today that campaigners have not received anywhere close to the 90 per cent of the value of their pensions. In fact, the campaigners who are now in the FAS get no inflation indexation protection for their pre-1997 contributions, they get very little for post-1997 contributions, and have to suffer a payment cap also. The longer someone worked for this company, the worst position they are likely to find themselves in. There are people in this campaign group who gave 40 years of service to steelworking in Cardiff—and not just in Cardiff. There are people in Kent for whom this situation is just as real, for people who worked hard all their lives in good, skilled jobs with a good salary, to find, in their later years, what was one of financial worry. And I think this is an outrage. An outrage that was born in the original legislation and one that has not been corrected the UK Government.

Now, I am conscious of time and I'd like to close by reading a quote from John Benson who has been diligent in keeping in touch with me and other AMs in this room on this issue. I know that although I don't represent his region, pension justice is something that I care passionately about, although I'm not in pensionable age yet. Despite that fact, I've worked diligently, as hard as I possibly can, with this campaign and with the Visteon pensioners in the past to try and fight for the pensions that they deserve. And it's phenomenal being part of the Visteon campaign—people were just spending all of their time in retirement on campaigning as opposed to actually enjoying the fruit of their labour. So, this is what John said, and then I'll finish with this: 'Almost 17 people have passed away and they're still being robbed of the pensions the Governments encouraged them to save in. That retirement dream has been shattered by Governments' flawed legislation. Many of these decent, hardworking men and women, it must be said, have been inhumanely betrayed by successive Governments. They don't deserve to be treated so unfairly; they put their trust in Governments and that trust was betrayed.'

We have a duty to support and help those former ASW steelworks. I hope that we can do justice to their cause and continue to raise this issue on the highest levels of political engagement, make sure that action is taken, and support John and people like him.