It looks as though the Government is about to be forced to properly compensate the victims of pension scheme wind-ups.

Amendments to the Pensions Bill were tabled yesterday, calling for the hopelessly inadequate Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) payments to be topped up to the more generous Pension Protection Fund levels.

These payments should be made from scheme assets immediately and, if trustees do not have sufficient assets in the schemes, the Government must make funds available quickly to pay those who are already past their scheme pension age, rather than having to wait for the hopelessly inefficient FAS system to pay out. The administration of the FAS should be passed over to the PPF.

This will not require extra funding from taxpayers. The amendments call for a Pensions Lifeboat fund to be set up, which will initially receive loans from the Government, but those loans will be repaid when the Lifeboat fund collects in assets from unclaimed financial sector funds, including unclaimed pension assets.

The amendments are being tabled by David Cameron, Frank Field, Alan Simpson, Menzies Campbell, George Osborne, Philip Hammond and other MPs who are calling for the Government to change its stance on this issue.

This is a truly bi-partisan initiative which will demonstrate to the Government that the will of Parliament is to ensure justice is achieved for those who listened to official guidance which told them to save in their employers’ pension schemes and that their money would be properly protected by law if their scheme wound up.

So far, the Government has denied any responsibility for the plight of these pension scheme members, even after unequivocal verdicts by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Public Administration Select Committee, European Court of Justice and High Court Judicial Review.

Now, after the revelations of advice prior to Brown’s decision to remove the dividend tax credits in 1997, it has become clear that he sacrificed these people’s pensions for the sake of cutting taxes for big business. He bears some responsibility for their plight, although he has refused to admit this so far.

The removal of ACT relief was not the most important factor in the demise of final salary schemes, but for schemes which were already in trouble, it was often the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Chancellor’s advisers made it clear that they had absolutely no information on the effect of the axing of tax relief on smaller schemes. They also made clear that not all schemes were in surplus so that the removal of tax relief would require imminent increases in employer contributions to replace the lost income.

The result was that weak sponsoring employers could not benefit from the cuts in corporation tax (as they were not making profits) and they could not afford the increased pension contributions, so the members were left at the mercy of markets and annuity rates on wind-up.

The Chancellor was offered the chance to wait in order to gather more data, or to phase in the changes rather than removing all at once, but he recklessly carried on regardless.

Ros Altmann, pensions expert and campaigner for the Pensions Action Group comments: “The Chancellor has behaved like Robin Hood in reverse. He took money out of workers’ pension schemes and gave it to profitable companies, saying that everyone benefited! This is nonsense. That is like taking money away from Peter, give that money to Peter’s brother, and saying Peter is not really worse off.”

Brown can no longer escape the consequences of his actions. Tomorrow (Wednesday 18 April), there will be a vote in the Third Reading of the Pensions Bill which will call for the required amendments to be put in place to end this awful chapter of pensions misery and finally give these good people the justice they deserve.

Hopefully enough Labour MPs will vote with their conscience and for their constituents, to force a change of policy on this issue.