Workers joined Ros Altmann's company pensions campaign blaming Venture Capitalist Apax Partners for having engineered the collapse and Garnier was the first East Midlands MP to question Apax's role. Apax's chairman at the time was a major donor to the Labour Party and Garnier asked what discussions "Ministers have had with Sir Ronald Cohen ..about the collapse of the pension scheme". Garnier raised the issue again with the new Minister for Pensions Reform Stephen Timms citing the "mysterious circumstances" under which the pensions disappeared. Timms agreed to "look into" the complaints saying that "in recent years, there have been too many instances of that kind."