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Latest information on the new 
staff stakeholder pension scheme

Page last updated: 25 March 2003

UPDATE 25 March:  click here to see a statement by the Secretaries' and Assistants' Council on the new pension plan, issued on 24 March 2003

The Portcullis Pension Plan is now open and available for Members' staff to join.

Neil Crawley (of the Department of Finance and Administration) emailed all MPs' Staff (copied to MPs) on 21 March 2003 with full information;  if you have not already done so, check your parliamentary email to see Neil's email and the attachments (covering letter, application and nomination forms, company booklets, fact-sheets, Q and A sheet, decision tree, etc).  

For your convenience, especially those of you who access the parliamentary intranet as "remote users", we have set out below a revised version of Neil's email with direct hyperlinks to all the attachments mentioned above.   WARNING: These are all PDF files and a couple are largish and may take some time to download.  We have given an indication of their size.

If you have any queries for Neil Crawley, please send them as emails (to crawleyn@parliament.uk) rather than phone him.

From: CRAWLEY, Neil
Sent: 21 March 2003 08:59
Subject: Portcullis Pension Plan

The Plan is now open and available for Members staff to join. There is a considerable amount of material attached to this email with information about the plan and the companies. We felt it necessary to provide as much as we could and, in addition, existing legislation means that we are obliged to send out certain information including decision trees.

Please take some time to read this material. As indicated in the covering letter it would be very helpful if you could address any queries to the appropriate contact points. In addition - unless you feel your queries are urgent - we would ask that you send your questions by email rather than by telephone. We will endeavour to answer all queries as quickly as we possibly can

Thank you

Neil Crawley, Project Manager/Departmental Recruitment Manager, Business Development Directorate,
Department of Finance and Administration.   0207 219 5973.  crawleyn@parliament.uk 

  1. The covering letter: Stakeholder communication No 4. (8KB)
  2. Question and Answer sheet to go with Stakeholder communication No 4. (20KB)
  3. Question sheet for your existing financial adviser/insurance company (10KB)
  4. Company booklet - Norwich Union. (147 KB)
  5. Company booklet - AXA.  (258 KB)
  6. Company fact-sheet - Norwich Union.  (31 KB)
  7. Company fact-sheet - AXA.  (22 KB)
  8. Scheme booklet. (41 KB)
  9. Decision tree. (60 KB)
  10. Application form.  (9 KB)
  11. Nomination form.  (8 KB)

 

Life cover.  A further email was sent to all staff on 21 March explaining that life cover is not available yet:

From: CRAWLEY, Neil
Sent: 21 March 2003 18:52
Subject: Portcullis Pension Plan

Further to the information sent out this morning I am sorry to have to tell you that we are not currently able to offer life cover with the Portcullis Plan. We have today been told by the Inland Revenue that our planned life cover is not acceptable to them. We are trying to establish why they are objecting and we will write again if the position changes.

 

If you wish to see the overall picture on the Stakeholder Pension scheme, click on the panel below to go straight to the Staff Pensions page on the F & A Dept's Intranet.    Any further updates will be added to that page.  [NB:  You need to be connected to PDVN to access this page. ]

Here's the url:  http://cfinw01/fanda/pensions/stakeholder.htm 

Alternatively, you can see any of the items listed above by clicking on the appropriate link below.  These are all in PDF format.

The Secretaries' and Assistants' Council issued the following statement about the new pension plan on 24 March 2003:

 

NOTICE TO ALL MEMBERS OF STAFF

Dear Member of Staff,

I am writing as Chairman of the Secretaries' and Assistants' Council, on behalf of its Executive, and with knowledge and support of the TGWU.

In June of last year we were invited to a meeting with the Fees Office to discuss the establishment of the Portcullis Pension Plan.

We were generally in favour of the proposals but felt that the compulsory nature for existing employees, was unfair and could be detrimental.

Since then, we have had several meetings and enlisted cross party support from MP's, our employers, with our concerns over the compulsory nature of the Fees Office proposals.            

1. We agree that for those who do not have any pension arrangements at present, that this will be an excellent vehicle for them to obtain their 10% non contributory pension allocation. 

2. For those who wish to review their arrangements it would be worthwhile reading the Fees Office proposals.

3. If you do not wish to change your present arrangements, we believe that you may continue as you are and do not have to comply with item 6 of document 10 unless you wish to.  The existing scheme was established by a Resolution of the House and as such any compulsory element would require a similar resolution to endorse such a change.

I do hope you find this information to be of help.  If you feel we can be of any assistance to you please do not hesitate to contact me.  Tel.  020 7219 4591

Yours sincerely,

PETER VINES - Chairman, Secretaries' and Assistants' Council

24 March 2003

Click here to see the Secretaries' and Assistants' Council page on this website.

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