Pension hero joins wind-ups fight

THE solicitor who acted for Mirror Group pensioners in the wake of the Maxwell scandal in the early Nineties has joined the fight to win justice for the 60,000 victims of company scheme wind-ups.

Giles Orton, head of pensions at law firm Eversheds - known to colleagues as the 'Robin Hood of pensions' - has agreed to support industry figure Ros Altmann in her campaign to set up a compensation scheme for victims of company pension fund wind-ups.

Orton's intervention comes ahead of a protest outside the Commons on Tuesday by hundreds of workers who have lost most of their pensions as a result of their employers' schemes being wound up with insufficient cash to pay them their benefits.

The meeting will also be attended by MPs and union officials who support a compensation scheme.

Orton is chairman of the Association of Corporate Trustees, an organisation whose members are responsible for the orderly wind-up of company pensions.

Many ACT members have been criticised over their fees and the time it takes for schemes to be wound up.

Yet Orton believes that compensation is a must. 'Thousands of workers have been let down badly by the pensions system,' he said.

'People who were mis-sold personal pensions in the late Eighties were able to get compensation.

'The case for workers in failed company pension schemes is equally compelling.'

Orton will now try to quantify the total deficit in schemes currently winding up. Altmann has proposed that the assets of all company schemes in wind-up should be pooled and pensions should be paid as they become due.

She said it would take between seven and ten years to exhaust the assets, after which the Government should step in with compensation.

Orton's record in campaigning against pension injustice began in 1990 when he prevented conglomerate Hanson from getting its hands on surpluses built up in the Imperial Tobacco pension scheme.

He then represented Mirror Group pensioners in their battle for justice after Maxwell siphoned hundreds of millions of pounds from their pension fund.