There are a lot of people here with very short memories.
The NATS obligation is to keep the pension fund at 100%. They have done that to date and as far as I can see from the proposals are not suggesting anything but doing that in the future.
At the time that the pension holiday was agreed the tax laws were such that pension funds were not allowed to carry large surpluses. That has changed since with amendments to pension legislation but at the time there was actually a requirement to reduce the surplus.
The surplus was not just reduced by the pension holiday. It was split between NATS and employees with NATS getting a pension holiday and the employees getting a reduction in contributions. Previous surpluses were mostly used to improve pension benefits. Although the surplus has now gone and NATS has resumed contributions we will continue to enjoy taking our part of the surplus until we cease to be members of the scheme. In my case I hope that will be a very long time. Those of us in NATS at the time had the opportunity to attend meetings and vote on that and, although some of us cautioned against that decision, the majority of union members voted to take the benefits offered to them in exchange for NATS taking its share as a pension holiday. Anybody who was a union member at the time is probably more responsible for the depreciating surplus than Paul Barron or Phil James neither of whom were members of the executive at the time.