The pensioners’ champion
The 85,000 people who lost their pensions when their company schemes wound up several years ago achieved an important moral victory this week when the parliamentary ombudsman demanded they be compensated because of government bungling.
But for many of the victims the heroine of their campaign is not Ann Abraham, who delivered the damning indictment of maladministration, but Ros Altmann, the independent pensions expert, who showed them how to take on the government and seek redress.
Ms Altmann, a feisty 49-year-old former fund manager, has spent nearly four years working pro bono to correct what she regards as a manifest injustice dealt to tens of thousands of decent, hard-working people. In the process, she has styled herself as an anti-establishment figure striving to correct the 85,000 “human tragedies” ignored by heartless ministers and officials.
No wonder, then, that she has adopted as her personal motto Edmund Burke’s refrain: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to be silent”. Ms Altmann has arguably done more than anyone else to keep the issue in the public eye. With her coiffure and deep tan, she brings a touch of colour to the grey world of pensions policy.
An acknowledged expert, she is also a brilliant media performer, marshalling often complex arguments against the serried ranks of Whitehall. Journalists delight in her fruity turn of phrase and sharp tongue. An apolitical figure, apart from membership of the now defunct Social Democratic Party, she has nonetheless focused her attack on Gordon Brown, the chancellor, holding him personally responsible for the government’s refusal to provide compensation. “This is a test of how Gordon Brown will square up as prime minister,” she has said. But her forthright style has also raised hackles, with some critics saying she has won a pyrrhic victory, as the government rejected out of hand the ombudsman’s conclusions and call for compensation.
After gaining a first-class degree in economics from University College, London, Ms Altmann spent a year at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her interest in the injustices of the pension system began in the early 1980s, when she obtained a PhD at the London School of Economics, focusing on poverty and the incomes of the elderly.
Her fascination with pensions, at a time when the subject was unfashionable, was influenced by Mervyn King and Larry Summers, academics who subsequently became, respectively, governor of the Bank of England and US Treasury secretary.
But the cloistered world of academia held few attractions and she moved to the City, spending 12 years in investment management, including five as head of international equities at Chase Manhattan and directorships at Rothschild and NatWest.
After the birth of her third child she left the City to spend more time with her family. She set up as an independent consultant advising a host of large companies and public bodies. She was recruited to a Treasury review into institutional investment, led by Paul Myners.
But the experience was bruising. She concluded that government rules underpinning the solvency of pensions schemes
