Pensions: Action call on missing payouts for trawlermen

Hull MP and Shadow Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson has appealed for payments to be made to 57 men in the "next few months" in a final push to help men who were told their pensions have been paid out – although they claim never to have received a penny.

Nine months after meeting officials responsible for the pension scheme to try to resolve the situation, he has asked them to pay out the remaining disputed claims.

The Yorkshire Post revealed last year the latest problems faced by former trawlermen, many of whom worked out of Hull in the 1960s and 1970s but had not received their pensions because they had not been traced.

Trawlermen had to pay into the pension schemes before the industry's decline in the 1970s, but it is thought the money was often paid through trawler companies, some of which no longer exist.

After pressure, a massive operation was launched by Aviva, the insurer and administrator of the Humber Fishermen's Pension Scheme, which led to thousands of men or their families, many of them in Hull or the south bank of the Humber, being tracked down and millions of pounds paid out – but in some cases the companies claimed the money had already been paid despite the men never having received it.

"What I am keen to do immediately is to sort out the disputed cases," Mr Johnson has written in a letter to Aviva and the scheme trustees Capital Cranfield.