General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

There's a lot of passionate opinion here and respectfully bits of confusion. I used to work for the Soce and was a state pensions administrator at that time. Yes Tonker (State related earnings pension scheme) did come in in 1975 but this was the same for everybody with a national insurance number (and paying class 1 category a or d) but the earnings related aspect (known as Additional Pension) only started from 6th April 1978. Stay with the state and you paid class 1 category A national insurance. The more you earned the more Additional pension you got from the state. If you Contracted out to employer's scheme you paid less % NI and were class 1 cat D with similar AP based on earnings subject to the upper earnings limit. The employer's scheme was legally bound to pay at least the state level of AP hence the term GMP (guaranteed minimum pension). I administered on the Maxwell cock up. The contracted out Mirror pension fund was robbed. The government paid to restore folks pension to the level of the GMP. Whups there has respectfully never been a link between contracting in/out and industrial injuries. If individual schemes are offering additional benefits as some here are saying I can't comment as i don't know.