KENT MP Derek Wyatt says he will press the Government for compensation for Sheppey steelworkers who face savage cuts in pension.

Mr Wyatt, commenting on the Pensions' Bill being introduced by the Government, said there was a sound reason why the legislation could not be made retrospective to cover former employees of ASW Sheerness whose pension rights were hit when the firm went into receivership.

"That would only help 100 or 200 other companies to slip out into receivership in the knowledge that their employees would be compensated for the loss of pension rights," he said.

"Instead, I shall be asking the Chancellor to set up a National Compensation Board to be funded by the Treasury which would look at hard cases like ASW."

When Mr Wyatt raised the pensions issue in the House of Commons in October, he said the crisis over the collapse of occupational pension schemes had led many people to try to commit suicide.

He has helped lead an extensive lobbying campaign by steelworkers, unions and fellow-MPs not just for compensation - which could cost the Government up to £100 million - but for legislation protecting the rights of other employees who could otherwise face a loss of pensions in future.

So he said he was happy to join others in welcoming the Bill, including Michael Leahy, general secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation.

Mr Leahy said: "The introduction of a Pension Protection Fund will mean that no British worker should have to suffer the fate of ISTC members at ASW, who not only lost their jobs when the company went into receivership last summer but were also informed that they would receive only a fraction of the expected pensions they had saved for, in some cases for as many as 40 years."

But he said it could not be right that those who lost their pensions through no fault of their own should remain uncompensated.

So the ISTC, together with the Amicus union, was taking legal action against the Government for failing adequately to implement the 1980 European Insolvency Directive, which the unions say should have protected the ASW pensions.