XEROX pensioners fear they are being denied a surplus of several millions of pounds in their pension fund that could be giving them a badly-needed rise.

Around 100 angry pensioners flocked to a meeting in the Xerox Social Club called by the pensions steering committee to seek "more realistic" increases for members.

It also sought to ascertain the uses for the fund's large surplus which members were told had recently dropped from £124 million to £92 million.

They were told that at the start of the pension scheme the company had added a rule that pension increases would be in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI).

In fact rises in taxation made the RPI a very poor way of judging the true cost of living rises which pensioners faced.

"That rule was put in without discussion or agreement," said steering committee member and ex-trustee Colin Butler. "We have been trying to persuade the company to be more flexible and relax that rule."

On the subject of the reduced surplus it was queried whether some of the money was being used to fund redundancy packages during company restructuring – a trend that was still continuing.

Mr Butler said: "The point was made at the meeting that the company has not made contributions to the scheme for the past ten years, and pensions have been deteriorating owing to the level of increases."

He said a number of letters had been written to the company by individuals and steering committee members. Among them were letters to the human resources director in the US, but all had met with a negative response – and the same treatment was given to a petition by pensioners calling for more help.

Help had been sought from MP Diana Organ who had also sent a request to the company to be more generous. She also wrote to the pensions minister to clarify ownership of the surplus.

His answer had been that it did not belong to the company, and he said that after the trustees had met their responsibilities in administering the scheme they could award rises of up to 5%.

Mr Butler said: "We were told and it was confirmed that the trustees recommended improvements for the pensioners that were overruled and turned down by the financial directors of the company in the UK.

"This was totally unacceptable to the pensioners."

He said the chairman made it clear to the meeting that it had no crisicism of pensioners' trustee Alan Cryer. In fact he had expressed his own frustration with the situation.

The meeting passed unanimously a motion to look for contacts in all UK Xerox pensioners groups to fight for claims together and agreed to meet again in a month.

"Although it was a good turnout we would abviously like to see more pensioners come along," said Mr Butler.

Xerox pensions manager Tony Phillips said on behalf of the company: "The Xerox scheme has an excellent record on pension increases.

"Pensions have been generally index-linked since the inception of the scheme in 1971.

"The company is proud of their record which few private schemes can match.

"The rules of the scheme have never been altered to the detriment of pensioners."