12. Dr Marks suggests that the Respondents have operated a mechanical rule to reduce the discretionary increases given to existing pensions: he says that the information given him by IBM and the Trustee at the time of his retirement was misleading and that there was a policy already operational in 1991 to degrade the value of pensions by 30% of the change in RPI at each opportunity. He says that without knowledge of this policy but after analysing the increases which had been granted over previous years, and taking account of information provided at a briefing given by the Respondents, he chose not to commute his pension.

The complaint does not refer to analysing the increases which had been granted over previous years, but to analysing a document which claimed (in error) to be an account of previous increases.  That document is the "information provided at a briefing".  Would you have known from the wording of [12] that the document had a provenance agreed by the Trust, and that its error was agreed by the Trust, and that Dr Marks' calculations made on that document in 1991 demonstrate that he relied on the erroneous information?  We don't think so.  However, if the Ombudsman had not been able to give the impression that the complaint was based on hazy recollection he would not have been able to dismiss it with the argument in [13]