A GOVERNMENT Minister has acknowledged the “outrage” of thousands of Hampshire staff of IBM over the IT giant’s plans to close its final salary pension scheme and alter the terms of its early retirement plan.

Pensions Minister Angela Eagle told a Commons debate she sympathised with IBM pension scheme members in the county – but stopped short of pledging a shake-up of the law governing company pensions.

IBM, which employs about 6,000 people in Hampshire at its UK research base at Hursley and its UK headquarters in Portsmouth, has provoked internal strife over its pension scheme plans, announced last year.

Romsey MP Sandra Gidley, who led a packed Westminster Hall debate on the issue, told MPs: “The proposals have particularly impacted on workers in their 50s, who had carefully planned their retirement. Many of those employees feel let down by IBM, which made certain promises about pensions a few years ago and is using the changes to force workers to retire earlier than planned. Secondly, they feel aggrieved that the Government’s pension law does not provide them with sufficient protections.”

She added that IBM workers who had contacted her “feel let down by the company to which they have devoted the best years of their life, and they feel that the Government offer them no protection against what they see as bully-boy tactics”.

Finances Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne said MPs had pressed the chief executive of IBM UK at a meeting on whether there was any reason why the finances of the company meant it needed to act in such a way.

Mr Huhne said: “The chief executive was unable to give any comparative data during that meeting to show why the company was under particular stress, nor did he provide any subsequent data. Frankly, if we consider that IBM made record profits in 2008, that tells me that it has no reason for reneging on the obligations it has undertaken.”

Ms Eagle, the pensions minister, responded by telling MPs: “The outrage and sense of injustice have certainly been communicated. I sympathise with the IBM pension scheme members. I understand the anxieties that arise for members when such events occur. Some employees’ future financial situations have suddenly changed quite dramatically, and it is clear that they now face difficult choices that they had not anticipated having to face.”

But the minister added: “The regulator... has had a look, but has, so far, found nothing illegal or which would fall foul of current regulations about the way that IBM have technically dealt with the scheme. We have to keep a balance in the law and not put employers off offering defined benefit schemes at all by making the way that the regulations work too inflexible. It is important that the IBM board looks at our debate today and that it takes due notice of the surprise, worry and anger that have been expressed. I have a great deal of sympathy with those feelings... and I hope that IBM will take note of them.”