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Further losses for Maxwell pensions

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Around 1,400 Maxwell pensioners will have their retirement payments halved after the Mirror Group printers' pension fund received more than it needed from the government-mediated 1995 settlement to compensate members.

Maxwell Communication Pension Plan (MCPP) members were given the news this week by the fund's trustee, The Law Debenture Trust Corporation, after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to help plug a 40m shortfall. This will mean that the average pension will be cut from around 180 a month to 90 from February.

In 1995 the government presided over the settlement to give 13 pension schemes 270m.

In June 1992, the government agreed to postpone collection of around 100m State Scheme Premiums (SSP) from the funds, until members' benefits were secure. The printers' scheme has since paid 30.5m of owed SSPs.

The Law Debenture Trust Corporation had asked for 30.5m that had been paid back to the government by the Maxwell Communication Works Pension Scheme, the pension scheme used predominantly by printers.

Eddie Thomas, pensions director of The Law Debenture Trust Corporation, said: "The 270m was not meant to be distributed so that one of the funds is in surplus, while another is in deficit."

A DWP spokeswoman said any shortfall was due to The Law Debenture Trust's management and that bailing out the fund would set a "dangerous precedent". "The problems have arisen out of investment decisions and the drop in the markets, not from the original settlement (in 1995)," said the spokeswoman. Thomas refuted allegations of mishandling and said 70% of MCPP funds had been in bonds, one of the safest investment options.

Story by John Davies