Mr Jones was paid £282,000 after his salary was reduced from £460,000, reflecting fewer hours spent on Morrisons’ affairs.Martin Ackroyd, fired as finance director after a dispute between Sir Ken and Mr Jones last year, was paid £506,000 in compensation.. The Government came under pressure to reveal the full extent of pension fund guarantees granted to privatised companies yesterday, as the Liberal Democrats laid down a series of parliamentary questions demanding full disclosure on the issue. At least 20 former state-owned companies are believed to have been handed funding-guarantees for their pension schemes when they were privatised in the 1980s and 1990s. However, only a handful of the so-called “crown guarantees” have been disclosed.
BT, the telecoms giant, said on Monday it believed its crown guarantee backed about three-quarters of the company’s £2.5bn deficit.

Pension schemes of former British Coal and British Rail workers are also backed by similar agreements.British Nuclear Fuels, the General Lighthouse Authorities and the National Freight Company are three others which have crown guarantees. However, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, which have two of the largest pension fund deficits in the UK, have both refused to disclose whether their schemes are state-backed.Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on pensions, said yesterday he had laid down a series of parliamentary questions demanding the Government clarify exactly which companies it has granted crown guarantees to.He said that the current mystery around the guarantees raised “serious issues in terms of national accounting”.”It’s equally important for both pension funds and for taxpayers to know exactly what guarantees have been granted and what the potential cost will be,” he said. “It cannot be right to keep anyone in the dark.”It is thought the Government’s potential liability could be in the region of £5bn. If BT’s claims are correct, the state would be liable for £1.88bn of BT’s pension deficit alone.BT’s claim is based on comments made by Lord Mackay of Clashfern in the House of Lords in 1984, when the Communications Act was being drafted. Hansard reports him as saying: “The Government stands behind the pension entitlement of current employees in respect of all their service to retirement; that is to say, service both before and after retirement.”However, the Department of Trade and Industry is challenging the claim, insisting that any guarantee only applies to benefits earned up to the date of privatisation.

BT believes the promise covers the benefits of all workers who were employed at the date of privatisation, including benefits accrued afterwards.The outcome will have a significant impact on the amount the state-backed schemes pay into the pension protection fund (PPF). Schemes with partial crown guarantees will pay a lower risk-based levy than other companies with similar sized deficits It also has serious implications for the future of BT. If the company’s claims are correct, its pension deficit is £625m – almost eight times smaller than thought, making BT a more attractive bid target.. Manufacturers have seen their first increase in new orders since 2004 despite strong rises in oil and metals prices, the UK’s largest employers’ group said yesterday. The CBI said its latest survey showed factories had reported a rise in optimism, output and the prices they had charged in the latest quarter.
It said strong growth in domestic demand for capital goods – the first for two years – and a slower decline in intermediate goods such as chemicals had offset a fresh decline among consumer goods firms. However, it warned that the record surge in energy and commodity costs could extinguish a modest recovery in Britain’s manufacturing sector.The CBI said oil prices had risen almost 10 per cent since it compiled its survey of almost 700 firms, while commodities had risen by an average of 11 per cent.Ian McCafferty, its chief economic adviser, said: “Clearly the continued inexorable rise in energy and commodity costs is a concern to the UK economy.”It could be that the impact may well start to be felt towards the end of this year and were we to see higher prices, growth around the world could disappoint the buoyant expectations and clearly manufacturing would be affected.”He said the CBI was considering cutting its growth forecasts for next year when it publishes its latest projections next monthMr McCafferty also said the “unrelenting” rise in energy and commodity costs had dented companies’ profits, forcing them to lay off the largest number of staff for more than a year. It said factories cut 34,000 jobs in the first three months of the year, the biggest cutback since the first quarter of 2005 and bringing total jobs shed by manufacturers in the past 12 months to 122,000.The CBI said profits were squeezed as rises in input costs outpaced the rise in prices charged.