I had a chance conversation in the summer with someone from DWP who was working on the McLoud fallout. Apparently they have only identified a handful of people who would be better off on the legacy schemes, though I would still want to know what the calculation was if it was my pension at stake. The complication for implementation is that the individual schemes within the public sector have to be written separately into law, which means the legislation has to be consistent across the schemes and not inadvertently disadvantage anyone.
As for 'top cover', the VSOs have very little say in what happens and can only try to influence the debate. There are people on CDP's team who are directly engaged but, again, they have no executive authority as that all rests with DWP and by extension the Treasury. The (relatively) good news is that the jam today vs jam tomorrow question - the combination of schemes you end up with - has been cast to ensure you get the most amount of jam and that the flexibility on timing of decisions means that you should not lose out in the long run. That said, I don't think there will be compensation for those whose pension income was limited under option A compared with the final option B, and whose quality of life was affected in some way by a reduction in disposable income. The bean-counter argument there will be that the way you use your disposable income is a personal choice.