The National Bus Company pensions issue has been a matter of concern and contention for a long time. Indeed, it goes back far beyond the lifetime of this Government to how our predecessors handled the privatisation arrangements for the National Bus Company in the mid-1980s.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) on his thoughtful and helpful speech, and on raising an issue which I fully understand is of great concern to a large number of former NBC employees. I also congratulate other hon. Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who have actively pursued the case of the pensioners over the long years through which the matter has been in dispute.

Regardless of their view on the merits of the case, hon. Members will understand that these matters have been complex and difficult to resolve. However, the Government's aim has been to achieve a just and honourable outcome for the many thousands of pensioners affected. We have given a high priority to ensuring a fair settlement for bus pensioners, and that is what we have achieved.

Opening the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries outlined the background to the case. I shall not detain the House by describing in detail its long history. Suffice it to say that when the Government took office, legal action was already in process as a result of our predecessors' offer in November 1996 to fund an action by the trustees to pursue recovery of the BEST surplus through the courts. That followed the decision by the pensions ombudsman, to which my hon. Friend referred.

Given that litigation on the much larger BEST scheme was already under way, we extended the offer to cover an action on NBPF—the National Bus pensions fund—the other National Bus Company pension scheme, thus enabling all the outstanding issues to be covered in a comprehensive settlement.

It took the trustees' lawyers considerable time to prepare their formal detailed arguments on both cases. The final part of the claims was not submitted by them until July 1998. We were strongly advised that negotiations on an out-of-court settlement should not be opened until all the complex legal issues and arguments had been fully considered and brought out into the open.

However, as soon as that stage had been reached, my right hon. Friend the Deputy prime minister announced in his speech to the 1998 Labour party conference that he had instructed lawyers to open discussions to achieve a just out-of-court settlement as soon as possible.

Those discussions were successful, and the negotiated settlement that we announced last summer was the culmination of our efforts to achieve a just outcome on the pensioners' behalf. As my hon. Friend reminded the House, that resulted in the Government agreeing to a total settlement of £356 million—moneys that were paid over immediately following the endorsement of the settlement by the High Court at the end of July 1999.

That was a full and final settlement of the long-standing claim regarding the two schemes. I know that there was widespread appreciation that the settlement was achieved, and also of the part played by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister in particular in ensuring that the case was taken forward and a just settlement reached.

I should make clear at this point that now that the Government have paid over the funds in question, responsibility for distribution of the settlement rests entirely with the trustees. It is the trustees who have, and must have, the legal responsibility for deciding on and implementing the settlement's distribution to individual pensioners.

I should also say a word about the composition and role of the trustees. They are independent of the Government. They are appointed by the Official Solicitor, who acts not for the Government, but in the interests of those for whom, for example, he is acting as judicial trustee or on whose behalf he is conducting litigation. The trustees are chaired by an independent, expert and widely respected pensions trustee, and they include a former NBC bus driver whose name was put forward by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.