Seasons Greetings to all pension victims

by Dr. Ros Altmann

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TO ALL PENSIONSTHEFT READERS

I would just like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and hope 2008 will be a great year for you at last.

Last week’s announcement on the FAS was the absolute best deal we could possibly have achieved.  There was no political support for any settlement above PPF and the media were also calling for a PPF solution – and we have achieved that.

I do expect that, in the next few months, the regulations and legislation will be in place to start payments.  This is an incredible achievement and all of you who have campaigned so often, badgered your MPs, written to the media and kept up the pressure have played a brilliant part in this success.

I know some of you feel that you would like to have achieved even more than PPF levels, but there was just no way we could have done that.  Nobody supported it and the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s recommendations for full compensation were blown away by the European Court of Justice judgment which specifically said the Government did not need to pay 100%!!!  Without fighting for another few years to overturn that judgment in Europe, there was no way to get above PPF and there is no way we could be confident of winning a case in Europe anyway.

Any of you who feel you can make a special case for getting more than the PPF solution, please contact the DWP, the FAS and your MP to get them to try to help you apply for more and see if you can make the case. 

I would like to thank you all for the wonderful emails, gifts and letters that you have sent me and I am so glad that so many of you are truly pleased with this tremendous outcome. 

Once again, I wish you all a lovely Christmas.

Best wishes

Ros