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Candidate's Statement

• Your pension benefits are, literally, vital. Ask any actuary: how long you live is determined, in part, by your prosperity.

• You need a progressive trust. When you cast your vote for MEDs (member-elected directors) in 2005, you were told that these guys would stay in place for three years. We all assumed we wouldn't be voting again until November 2008. But now in February, when you've probably got the flu or are abroad on a skiing holiday, you've suddenly got to think about voting for an MND candidate. No-one has really apologised to members over the bringing forward of this election. Given the massive uphill task that new MEDs face in learning the ropes—actuarial, financial, legal—it seems crazy that their final year, the year in which they would have become most effective, should be so curtailed. The company had the opportunity to discard the candidates' age limit of 67 before the last election, but chose not to. It only got rid of this clearly discriminatory rule when legislation forced it to. Rather than drag its heels and change its constitution at the last moment, the Trust should see where legislation is headed and be a leader in its implementation.

• Choose an M Plan member. The terms of the M Plan stand in stark contrast to those of the Enhanced M Plan. Far more than someone from a particular gender, race, or religion, you need an M Planner on the board to represent your interests, despite the terms of each scheme being set by HR, not the Trust. M Planners are the fastest-growing section in IBM UK.

• Choose a DB member too. It's also essential to have a member of a Defined Benefit plan—e.g. the C, N or I Plans—on the board, as the value of these schemes has been damaged most in recent years.

• Diligent yet compassionate. I am the least touchy-feelie person I know, but for the past five years I've sat on the BAC—the Benefits Allocation Committee. (Strangely the female MNDs always seem to get assigned to the hard, technical Investments Committee.) The BAC considers every Death-in-Service, every Ill-Health-Early-Retirement case, and now every Death-in-Retirement. Although empathy doesn't always come naturally to me, it is my work on the BAC that I feel proudest of, across all of my trustee contributions. It's also the most interesting work on the Trust, in my opinion. I also sit on the Disputes Resolution Committee, which requires similar levels of care.

• Choose a Continuity Candidate. So much of what the Trust does in the future is constrained by what it has done in the past. New MNDs will soon discover that it is difficult to find out what the board has decided in the past, because there is, for example, no online repository of minutes of previous meetings. The only way to find is to ask someone who was there, or go down to North Harbour to look at the hard-copy files. You need someone who can vaguely remember what has been done, and more importantly why it was done, and has kept all his files. That person is me.

• Clearly not in it for the money. My personal view is that payments to employee MNDs should be unnecessary to motivate them to do a good job. I don't believe any of the candidates are doing it for the money.

• If you want any help with your vote, I would recommend:
  1. An M Plan candidate
  2. Gavin Wilson
  3. Mike Butcher
  4. Brian Marks

• For further information, look on the web for editthis.info/mnd or write to me at mnd@post.com