The deadline for appealing against the Ombudsman's determination has passed and no appeal has been made. An appeal would not have given the complainants a "level playing field" because a determination can only be appealed on a point of law and so some of the limitations of the determination would have carried over to the Court. We would not have been able to raise again matters in our favour which the Ombudsman chose to ignore, such as pre-1995 activity and Barry Morley's documented reasons for his resignation.

However, there were complainants keen to have the Ombudsman's mis-reading of what was relevant in law, and lack of logic, put before a judge. This has proved impossible. Although their case was strong, and important not only for us but for DB scheme members in general, the small risk of large costs falling on individuals precludes an appeal.

So the current Ombudsman has brought the complaints process to a dead end.  It could now only be restarted if there was substantial new evidence, such as finding the document that was not found and discovering that it restricted the original scheme to providing only DB pensions.

This legal position has no relevance to the ethical position. It remains unethical for a company to say one thing and later do another. The legal position does not alter any practical effect - the pension in payment policy remains the worst of all comparable companies. Pensions in payment policy remains relevant to all scheme members, including employees and deferreds for whom it has not yet come into play. (And the Trust calculated that a 54.8% increase for those who worked for IBM earliest was needed just to bring them up to the poor policy level. Link below.)

AMIPP has written to MPs pointing out the unsatisfactory nature of the whole affair. Nothing much will be gained from this unless scheme members follow it up. You will find a page on the practical aspects of that, with a link to the letter that was sent.

Please act.

AMIPP, the Association of Members of IBM UK Pension Plans       www.amipp.org.uk