Unison Ltd (Unison) said the campaign appeared during the run-up to industrial action, on 30 November 2011, which was in response to proposed changes to public service pensions that affected their members in a range of jobs. They said the union had been part of extensive negotiations related to the various proposals, which had developed and evolved over that period. At the time, they judged the negotiations to have effectively stalled and therefore balloted their members on taking industrial action. Unison said that throughout that time employers and government ministers had, in documentation and in the media, presented various scenarios for how the proposals, even as they were evolving, would impact on selected case studies within their membership. The primary aim of the ads, which appeared only in the weeks leading up to the industrial action, was to use similar case studies to demonstrate that those involved in the action were ordinary people who would have to make a difficult decision to lose a day's pay in order to demonstrate against the proposals. Unison said they had chosen that approach to communicate how their members felt about the proposals and said the case studies were selected to cover some of the key public service areas that would be affected by the changes.

Unison said the ads related to case studies of actual members, whose names might have been changed. They submitted details of the members' pensionable salaries and of their dates of birth along with details of how the figures in the ads were arrived at. They said they based their calculations on the information available at the time the ads went to print and the contribution increases referred to in the ads were not necessarily calculated on the basis of a three per cent increase, which the complainant had understood to be the case, because contribution rates were tiered so the precise potential contribution would depend on member earning levels. Certain groups of earners would therefore pay a greater, or lesser, percentage of pension contribution than other earners. They said they had based the claims that Nicola would have "£68 LESS EVERY MONTH IN HER PAY" and that Sandra would be "£413 WORSE OFF A YEAR AT WORK" on the increase in the individuals' gross pension contributions pre-tax relief. They had based the claim "£597 WORSE OFF TODAY", for Tina, on the reduction in net take-home pay, however, to give balance to the collective examples and to provide the less 'dramatic' sounding figure. They said that regardless of whether gross or net pay figures were used, the point of the ads remained the same.

They also submitted ready reckoner results related to each of the case studies and to the figures stated in the ads. Unison said the ready reckoner was developed by qualified actuaries and was based on the proposals developed by the Government, which were those that were relevant at the time the ads went to press. It was available via their website at the time, so their members could calculate how the proposals would affect their pensions. They said the subject and detail of pension issues was complex but care had been taken to ensure the accuracy of the figures stated in all three ads. The figures and references had been checked rigorously by their in-house pension professionals, and pension experts would also check figures and wording before similar ads were produced in future. They said the ads correctly stated the amounts the women would have to pay if the proposed changes came into effect.

1. Unison said the ads referred to potential detrimental changes to future pension terms, including contribution increases, and the data behind the figures in the ads was based largely on publicly released information, which they submitted. They said talks between them and the Government were widely reported in the press and they disagreed that the ads implied the proposed changes would come into force; the purpose of the industrial action was to try and prevent that. Instead, they believed the ads simply referred to potential threats to pensions that were faced by typical public sector workers and explained why they were taking action.

2. Unison said that if the proposals outlined in 'approach one' of the consultation document from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), dated 7 October 2011, were to be implemented, Sandra would face paying approximately an extra £420 gross in pension contributions for the tax year 2013 to 2014 and possibly more in the following tax year; she would be at least £413 worse off. They said her pension could reasonably be expected to be £1,081 per year less if the scheme accrual rate was to change, from April 2014, from the current 1/60th to 1/68th, which was based on a design option outlined in a letter, dated 21 September 2011, from the Local Government Group (LGG) to the Secretary of State. In that instance, Sandra's pension would be at least £1,069 less per year. They said the LGG's September letter referred to "… a reduction in the accrual rate to in the region of 1/68ths", because it dealt with alternative means of the Government recouping the £900 million it sought from its LGPS members in England and Wales by 2014–2015. The LGG's proposal to move to a 1/68th accrual rate for those members with full time equivalent pensionable earnings of £15,000 or more, should members choose that option, was a purely interim measure to offset the need for some members to pay the contribution increases first announced by the Chancellor in his October 2010 comprehensive spending review. That was also made clear on the ready reckoner, which stated "LGG Option B has no increase in contributions, but reduces the accrual rate to 1/68ths from April 2014". Unison said that accrual rate was one of a number of options the independent actuaries who developed the ready reckoner advised them to adopt for member modelling purposes.

Unison said the ready reckoner result for Sandra also worked on the basis of a 1/80th accrual rate for after April 2015, which was the potential date for the new LGPS to come into force at the time the ads went to press, with the 1/68th accrual rate being used for the year 2014–2015 to help offset the contribution increases sought by the Government. They said the accrual rate of 1/80th was used for after April 2015, because that was the possible rate the Government could have considered introducing for the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) at the time the ads were released. That assumption was also recommended to them by the independent actuaries. They said that was clear from the ready reckoner itself, which stated "From April 2015, the proposed scheme is assumed to be a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) scheme with an accrual rate of between 1/60ths and 1/80ths, and revaluation before retirement in line with Average Weekly Earnings (AWE)". They considered those assumptions to be reasonable based on the information publicly available at the time the ads went to press.

3. Unison said Nicola was not a member of the police pension scheme but of the LGPS, which was the only funded public service pension scheme; pension benefits were paid from a fund of money administered by the relevant authority and not from general taxation. Based on Nicola's current salary, her pension contribution percentage would increase by 2.5% from April 2014 if the contribution increase proposal outlined in the September 2011 letter from the LGG to the Secretary of State was adopted. That increase would amount to an extra £68 per month in gross pension contributions by 2014–2015, or an additional £816 per year, which would equate to £18,000 over the rest of an assumed working life. Unison stressed that the LGG proposal was a potential one only, with the aim of mitigating collective concerns over the effect of the comprehensive spending review commitment. If contributions were raised by 3.2% across the board, many members would simply opt-out of the pension scheme and its future and financial viability would therefore be threatened, hence the series of alternative proposals that were put forward by the DCLG and LGG during autumn 2011.

They said the figures used were indicative and represented the likely increase in contributions by 2015. They said the Government continued to consider average contribution increases of 3.2% across the board, in line with the spending review commitment. It was conceivable as part of the current negotiations around the future of the LGPS, however, that those contribution increases could be limited by the potential bringing-forward of changes to the scheme, in order to help raise the revenues sought by 2015, without there being the mass opt-outs that contribution increases could result in. Unison said they based the ready reckoner figures on contribution tiers that meant for most of their members the contribution increase would be less than 3.2%, so as not to exaggerate the effect. The 3.2% figure was an average contribution yield increase and in effect no member would have a 3.2% increase, because any increase was dependent on their level of pensionable earnings. They disagreed that the ad was misleading and said that, by basing the calculation on a real person, they had shown an accurate figure, which was less than the Government's proposed 3.2% blanket increase.

4. Unison said that according to Tina's status and based on assumed contribution increases outlined in a Department of Health consultation paper, dated July 2011, she could expect a £597 annual drop in net take-home pay over the tax year 2014–2015. They said that if Tina was to join a 1/60th accrual rate Career Average Revalued Earnings scheme from 2015, which was the reference scheme proposed by HM Treasury in the document "Public Service Pensions: good pensions that last", dated November 2011, and her future normal pension age rose in line with increases in state pension age, she could reasonably expect her annual pension on retirement to be £1,275 less.

They said the Government had made clear that members of the NHS pension scheme would be required to pay an average contribution increase of 3.2% by 2014–2015, however, they had since set out a preferred approach, which meant there would be no increases for those that earned under £15,000, no more than a 1.5% increase for those earning up to £21,000 and that while higher earners would pay, it was proposed that any increase would be capped at 6%. Unison said the ready reckoner results for Tina showed the net reduction in her take-home pay for 2014–2015 and the potential loss in her annual pension on retirement. However, if they had based the increase on the proposed average 3.2% increase, rather than on the 2.7% increase they had used, the impact would have been significantly greater than that stated in the ad. They said the chance of Tina's contribution increases being less than the amount stated in the ad for 2013–2014 were minimal because while the government allowed discussions around specific schemes to distribute the increase in employee contribution yield, that was within strict parameters. They said the relevant discussions were about whether the high paid were paying too much, not whether the lower paid should pay less, and if the contribution for higher paid members was to decrease, then to meet the increase in yield lower paid members would have to pay more. They said they had based the proposed increases on relevant published figures and had not misleadingly implied that the effects would be greater than those proposed by the Government.

Unison said the original intention of the comprehensive spending review was to phase-in contribution increases over three years, with the intention of recouping 40% of the savings in years one and two and the remaining 20% over the third year. They said, given the comprehensive spending review commitment to consider phasing in contribution increases over a three-year period from April 2012, they believed it was entirely appropriate to extrapolate likely 2012–2013 increases, as implied by consultation, and project them to future years, based on the likely split identified in the spending review. Unison said members wanted to know how much more they were likely to have to pay in total and their contribution calculation was entirely consistent with the likely direction of travel, based on publicly available information. They said the ad stated that Tina had worked as a nurse for 27 years, which was correct. She had, however, accrued only 23 years of pensionable service, due to having had a four-year career break to raise a family. They said that was common amongst their majority female membership and the figure in the ad was correctly based on Tina's years in the NHS pension scheme.