Public Service Pensions Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Hutton of Furness

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, my name is attached to the first of these amendments and I support the second one. I do not want to add a lot to what my noble friend has said but I concur with him that at some point along the line, there has been either a mistake or an oversight. There can be very little argument but that the uniformed ranks who happen to be employed by the Ministry of Defence do a very similar and, if anything, significantly more dangerous job in certain locations than firefighters generally, and that therefore the exception to the general rule that applies to uniformed staff covered in my noble friend Lord Hutton’s report ought logically to apply to this group of workers. I cannot see a logical argument for excluding them from that exception.

My second point is that this group is in a Civil Service scheme that covers several hundred thousand people. We are dealing here with a unique workforce of 800 firefighters who serve our defence forces in the United Kingdom, in war zones and in other parts where the British Armed Forces operate abroad. They are not like the rest of the Civil Service, and nor would it be a major cost to the Civil Service scheme were this anomaly to be rectified in the Bill. In the other areas of the Bill in which I am interested as regards the local government scheme, the Minister has been pretty flexible over many aspects, which I applaud—and he will, I hope, be more flexible later this afternoon. However, I am surprised that he cannot see that this is an issue on which the Government could easily concede; it would meet with huge approval, would cost very little and would correct an anomaly that has been there for some time but does not need to be aggravated by raising the normal statutory retirement age, which the rest of the Bill does.

I ask—I plead with—the Minister, if he is not prepared to accept the amendment, to take it away again and consider it seriously, because in this respect his civil servants, whether in the Ministry of Defence or the Treasury, are not serving him well. We should have found a way through this. We should find a way this afternoon to ensure that the position of this group of workers is recognised and reflected in statute.

[Lord Hutton of Furness]

My Lords, perhaps I should briefly join the debate because my report has been cited by my noble friend. I echo the comments of my noble friends and support their argument. I ask your Lordships’ House to indulge me if I revisit some of the issues from my report. It talked about the uniformed services in general, not about whether you happened to be in the Civil Service scheme or any other scheme. I talked about uniformed services—firefighters, police and the Armed Forces. My report made a simple argument that the nature of their service is unique and should be reflected in the pension arrangements that we make for them.

I have to say that if, during the course of my inquiry, I had known about the unique circumstances of the MoD firefighters, I would have referred specifically to them in my report and urged the Government to show some flexibility, support and sympathy for the special role that they play within our Armed Forces. Sadly, this issue was not drawn to my attention, so I did not make any specific recommendations about the MoD firefighters or the MoD police. If I had known about it, I certainly would have done so.

I am sympathetic to the Minister’s position. I am sure that his officials have told him that enormous complexity is involved in changing the normal pensionable age for this group of workers. However, I ask the Minister to remind himself—I know what a decent and honourable person he is—of the fact that this is fundamentally a matter of fairness and of the need to approach the issue in the right way. I do not believe that there is any substantive technical reason why we cannot look again at the role of the MoD firefighters and the MoD Police. If there is a technical issue it has to be addressed on the face of the Bill, as my noble friend suggested, or in the scheme regulations or the discussions with the relevant trade unions. Surely there has to be a way of doing the right thing for these people. The MoD firefighters currently happen to be in the Civil Service pension scheme, which has a higher retirement age than the firefighters scheme or the Armed Forces scheme. It is incumbent on us to address that issue and not to use the technical arguments as an excuse for not addressing this fundamental discrepancy.

I am not familiar with the history of all this—I am sure that there is a lot of history to it—but I wish that it had been raised with me, as I would have referred to it in my final report in the way that I have suggested. However, we now have an opportunity to do the right thing for these people, and I hope that this House takes the right course.