Police: Pension Rights

Lord Bach Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bach]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy with regard to the pension rights of spouses and civil partners of police officers who have been killed in the line of duty.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, in January 2016, this Government changed legislation to the benefit of widows, widowers and civil partners of police officers in England and Wales who have died on duty. As a result, from 1 April 2015, those survivors who qualify for a survivor pension will now continue to receive their survivor’s benefits for life, regardless of remarriage.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the serving police and crime commissioner for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. I thank the Minister for her Answer and for seeing me earlier today to discuss these matters with her and her officials. On 15 August 2002, two Leicestershire police officers—Police Constables Andy Munn and Bryan Moore—were brutally killed by a criminal driver on the A42. They not only both died in the same incident but both left young widows and small children. One widow remarried seven years later in 2009 and lost her police widow’s pension. The other widow remarried in 2015 and, because of a change in the law, has kept her police widow’s pension. How in all conscience can it be right that two women, both of whose husbands were killed while bravely fighting crime and in the line of duty on the same occasion, can be treated so differently by the country that owes so much to both of them? Will the Minister please look at this case again? Does she not agree that such obvious unfairness offends against every principle this House believes in?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord for his Question, for the way in which he has always constructively engaged with me, and for coming to see me this morning. I pay tribute to him as Parliament’s only PCC. Without talking about individual cases, I say that it is absolutely tragic that police officers are killed in the line of public duty. When it happens, we should honour the officers’ memory and sacrifice. That is why this Government have changed the rules so that all survivors of police officers who die on duty do not now face the prospect of losing their pension on remarriage. That is a change that no previous Government have felt able to make. However, we must continue to have regard to the wider implications of a change to public service pensions. It is the duty of government to ensure that any policy changes are legally and financially sound. I do not pretend that the judgment is always easy but it is one that we must make. Successive Governments have maintained a general presumption against retrospective changes to public service pensions, and I am afraid that that remains in place.