I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and, in particular, the initiative that the Presiding Officer did at the start of this Assembly to bring these formats of debates forward so that Members can bring issues like this, which aren't in the devolved competence, but do affect many of our constituents and we do have a view on it. And I do pay a special tribute to John and Phil who are up in the gallery this afternoon, and in particular the campaigners as well who have surrounded themselves in this campaign, because it is about justice and it is about natural justice here.

When I was looking into this issue over the last couple of days, refreshing my memory of the campaign, I read that the UK Government said that payments were following the legal requirements. Well, there's a moral requirement here, I have to say, and successive Governments have failed to live up to their moral obligations in this particular area.

Bethan, in her closing comments, said, 'I'm not a pensioner yet', and I don't mean this in a derogatory way in any shape or form, but we all think about what we want in our retirement, and many, if not all of us, try and put some form of provision in place, and the workers that are affected—by this shortfall that has happened, in one breath, if you want to be kind; robbery in another breath if you want to be brutally honest—have had their future taken away from them. The individuals concerned did what was right—they put a percentage of their income into a pot. That pot was, they thought, secure, and when they came to retirement age, that would have provided the creature comforts and the ability to have a retirement that they'd planned for all their working lives.

And across the workforce, some would have had more than others to lose, but each and every one of the workers at ASW, and many other operations across the United Kingdom, not just here in Wales, have had that retirement taken away from them. And there's an obligation on politicians, whatever walk they come from, and from whatever political party they come from, to actually live up to the moral obligation that we need to correct this injustice. And I believe passionately in this, because I've met the campaigners, and John in particular, and Phil, on several occasions and I just cannot see a logical argument that can be put back to them when you see the points that they make. And it's not right that people are having their pension eaten into because they do not have inflation protection built into the compensation package that was put in place. Inflation is a brutal enemy of retirement. Once you move on to that very fixed income of the pension that you have and you physically, obviously are in your—many people stay very active in later life, but it is a fact that you're not doing the same amount of work or having the same opportunities as when you were 20, 30 or 40, and your earning potential is constrained, and you're on that fixed income.

And so there is an obligation, I believe, for the UK Government to reopen this. And I know it's a Conservative Government up there today. It was a Conservative/Lib Dem Government before that, and it was a Labour Government before that. And I accept that in the early to mid 2000s, various remedies were put in place, but those remedies have come up short and have come up short in a big way, and it cannot be right that, because a period of time has passed, people in positions of influence and power believe that that time will allow this to be brushed under the carpet and washed away. It will not be allowed to be brushed away and it will not be allowed to be washed away, because, as I've said, the individuals concerned by this injustice did what was right and, as a society, we need to do what's right by them by giving back their pensions and that security that is required in later life.

We knew that these things were happening in the 1990s and the 1980s. We only need to look at what happened with the Robert Maxwell pension scandal that was going on at Mirror Group Newspapers. This wasn't something that was unknown, and at the time regulators and politicians didn't step in and correct it. Well, we now know where those anomalies existed. Safeguards have been built into the system, but those caught by the inadequacies of the previous system shouldn't be penalised in their retirement. And I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments on the order paper today of this motion, and I very much look forward to continuing to campaign with the campaigners to make sure that we give them justice, that we give them their pension back—pensions that they paid into. It is their money, and they deserve it, and we will not allow the passage of time to allow this injustice just to fall away. And so I welcome working across parties in this Chamber to make sure that their voices are not forgotten, and I will work with colleagues, wherever they sit, to make sure that we get the changes to the scheme that are required.