Earl Attlee
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(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Earl Attlee
To ask His Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the cost to public funds of bringing prison officer pension age into line with that of firefighters, the police and armed services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, the Government currently have no plans to change the pensionable age of prison officers, which is set under the Civil Service-wide pension scheme. Any estimate of the cost of doing so would require complex actuarial calculations to determine the higher contributions that would need to be met by the employer and by current and future members.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend the Minister for that reply. Is it correct that Treasury Ministers are responsible for setting the pension age and not MoJ Ministers? Is it also correct that for a newly recruited prison officer, the pension age is 68 years old? Is this policy not really one of “lock until you drop”?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, on the first question, the Treasury has overall responsibility for setting pension arrangements for the Civil Service; that is not an MoJ responsibility, and my noble friend correctly makes that point. As for “lock until you drop”, can we please distinguish between the age at which you get a full pension and the age at which you can retire, which is something quite different? A prison officer does not have to work to the age of 68 to qualify for any pension; he can retire earlier on a smaller pension and then, unlike most situations in the armed services, he can return to work—in a less front-line role, typically. He will continue to work and earn a pension, as well as the other pension he has already accrued. It is not at all clear that prison officers under the present scheme are worse off than they would be if they were in the armed services, especially given the higher contributions the latter have to make.