Personal Pensions Mis-selling

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 6:31 pm on 3 November 1998.

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Photo of Jon Trickett Jon Trickett Labour, Hemsworth 6:31, 3 November 1998

I will come to the case of an independent financial adviser. It is clear to me that independent financial advisers were part of the mis-selling of pensions in the mining communities, but that was a different type of process from the one that I am describing.

The regional managers and the large companies, as well as the smaller companies, considered the redundancies to be not a great national tragedy, but a golden opportunity. They were prepared to close their eyes to such practices. As a consequence, ill-trained and inappropriately recruited former miners donned their Sunday-best suits and went back into their own communities to sell inadequate schemes, which they did not fully understand, to their neighbours, friends and former workmates. It is a great scandal that huge commissions were offered to that sales force to identify pension transfers from the miners' pension scheme.