Dozens of people in Oxfordshire are still waiting to hear whether they will be among nearly 1,400 Maxwell pensioners facing a 50 per cent cut in their retirement income.

The former employees of Nuffield Press, now in Abingdon, and Pergamon, which is now part of the Reed Elsevier group in Kidlington, contributed to pension schemes which were raided by the companies' late owner Robert Maxwell.

Anna Wagstaffe, who helped to lead a group of journalists in a long-running strike at Pergamon, said: "The Pergamon people will not have been greatly affected because the scheme was only set up shortly before the scandal broke.

"The real victims are the Nuffield Press employees."

But it is not clear whether the Nuffield Press employees are affected by the revelation that the Maxwell Communication Pension Plan scheme has a £40m deficit. The announcement follows a Government decision not to hand over £30.5m it received from another Maxwell scheme.

Law Debenture, which acts as trustees for the MCPP, said the decision means nearly 400 people who retired after 1992 will see their pensions halve from February 1.

Another 1,000 people who have yet to draw their pensions will get up to 50 per cent less than they were expecting.

The only members of the scheme who will not be affected by the move are 800 who retired before 1992.

The dispute revolves around the fact that all the Maxwell schemes were contracted out of the state earnings related pension scheme (Serps).

In 1992 the then-Conservative Government reinstated the schemes back into Serps because they had insufficient funds to met the guaranteed minimum pension.

But the schemes were effectively given an interest-free loan instead of having to pay back the contributions which were waived.

By 1999 the Maxwell Communication Works Pension had a sufficient surplus to begin paying back the Government, and has given them a total of £30.5m.

But the trustees of the MCPP, which has a £40m deficit, argues that the Government should use this money to help their scheme.

The trustees are also angry that it has taken the Government three years to decide it will not give them the £30.5m.