During Wednesday’s Westminster Hall debate on police pensions, the minister for policing and criminal justice, Damian Green, made reference to the PFEW accepting the proposed pension reforms as “the best deal possible”. We have received feedback from some members regarding Damian Green’s comments criticising PFEW’s decision to engage with the government and underlining the view that the PFEW could have done more.
It is important to note in this regard that had we refused to engage with the Home Office, the likely outcome would have been the imposition of the Home Secretary’s original proposals. We must underline the fact that pension changes were never ours to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with as they are gifted by the Home Office. We could only try to influence the outcome with open engagement in the process, and then accept improvements that were offered. The issue of pension structure and reform is a different situation in law to any other pay and conditions negotiations, and stands outside of this official negotiation framework.
The original proposal from the Home Office, known as the Reference Scheme, would have meant that any police officer who did not serve until the age of 60 would not have been entitled to draw his or her new career average pension until state pension age, which is due to rise to 67 and then to 68. We worked extremely hard to secure significant concessions on this aspect of the proposal and as a result a police officer who retires at 55 will now be able to draw a reduced pension immediately, based on being able to draw a full pension at 60 rather than 67/68.
We also secured an improvement in the transitional protections, so that they apply to more members than was originally proposed. For example, under the original Home Office proposals if you were over 45 or if you had ten years’ service left before retirement and were aged 40 or above you would not have your retirement date or pension changed. We have now ensured that if you have 10 years of service left and are aged 38 years or older you will have the same protection from that point on. Officers who are within four years of being able to qualify for that protection, for example if they are over 38 and have 14 years of service left, will also still receive some degree of protection.
While we were satisfied with securing these particular concessions and accepted this as a better outcome than that originally offered, we remain disappointed with the scale of the reform and fully understand members’ anger. It is for this reason that we are grateful to those who brought the unfairness of the reform to the attention of MP Keith Vaz, and consequently for the public debate at Westminster Hall.
The table below offers a further explanation of how the government’s initial offer compares with the final position which was agreed following representations from PFEW. For more information, visit the dedicated pensions section on the Federation’s website www.polfed.org
Comparison of the Government’s final position with the original reference scheme
Richard PainCommunications OfficerPolice Federation of England and Wales
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