Judicial Pensions (Remediable Service etc.) Regulations 2023

Thursday 15th June 2023 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

13:55

Moved by

[Lord Bellamy]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Judicial Pensions (Remediable Service etc.) Regulations 2023.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for the fact that these regulations comprise 44 pages of the densest technical complexity one could imagine. I will try to explain them as simply as possible. Essentially, they provide for technical aspects of what is known as the McCloud remedy—McCloud being a legal ruling by the Court of Appeal in 2015 which found certain reforms to public sector pensions to be discriminatory on the grounds of age. These regulations remedy that ruling for the judicial sector.

It is a little complicated because, prior to 2015, various pension schemes applied to the judiciary. There was one under the Judicial Pensions Act 1981, another under the Judicial Pensions and Retirement Act 1993 and a third for fee-paid judicial offices. In 2015, the Government introduced extensive reforms to public service pension schemes, following a report by the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission. Following those reforms, the Government introduced the Judicial Pensions Regulations 2015, which provided that older members aged 55 or over were exempt from the various reforms and remained in their legacy schemes. Essentially, McCloud was a challenge by younger judges who said, “The older members are all right but we are disadvantaged”. The Court of Appeal held in 2018 that the 2015 reforms were discriminatory on the grounds of age. In July 2019, the Government accepted that judgment and took steps to address the difference.

These regulations are the result of those steps, which have been consulted on widely. Essentially, the affected judicial persons or their dependents, as the case may be, will be offered a retrospective choice between continuing to belong to their legacy scheme or moving to the 2015 scheme for the period between 2015 and 31 March 2022. Since 31 March 2022, everyone has been moved on to yet another scheme, the judicial pension scheme 2022. That is the only scheme available currently, but this deals retrospectively with the period from 2015.

14:00

Other public sector schemes follow a slightly different approach. In other schemes, the idea is that one makes a choice at the point of retirement, which is called the deferred choice principle, on whether you prefer the old scheme or the new scheme. It was expressed in the course of the consultation that it would be preferable to have an option to choose now which scheme you want to belong to, rather than wait for your retirement. This involves an options exercise, which will be conducted very shortly, and then people will have the chance to opt for the approach they prefer. Again, the Government have consulted on these proposals. The result of that consultation has been published, and there has been considerable support for the options exercise to begin as soon as possible.

The order takes the opportunity to introduce some rather technical supplementary amendments relating to some indexation calculations, the position of dependant contributions and a particular extension of certain regulations regarding fee-paid officeholders. I am glad to assist on any of the technical detail of that as necessary.

The Government trust that these regulations will show that they have given proper consideration to the McCloud judgment and that the judicial pension scheme is complete and equitable. I commend the instrument to the Committee.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I have only one question for the Minister: are there going to be further SIs on this matter? I remember debating previous SIs on the McCloud remedy, if I can put it like that, and the various things that need to be put in place. As the Minister said, it is extremely complicated. I have an expert behind me—my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton—although he is not taking part in this debate. My real question is: are there going to be further SIs on this matter?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am happy to answer the noble Lord’s question in the negative: as far as I know, this is the last SI for the judiciary. The McCloud remedy is still to come in other parts of the public sector. This is the first of the McCloud SIs, I think, and we will gradually work through the public sector. The noble Lord and I have laboured on previous occasions through the detail of this dense matter, but I am happy to say that those particular labours seem to be coming to an end at this point.

Motion agreed.