Prison Officers: Retirement

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have extensive experience of the prison estate, so I do not come here with that hat on, but I do have a background in the trade union movement stretching back to when I was 16 years old, and I was for some years the trade union envoy for David Cameron when he was Prime Minister. Our aim at that time was not to convert the trade union movement, because its leaders are not going to suddenly say, “I’d like to support the Conservative Party”. Our job—or my job—was to make clear to them that something like one-third to 40% of serving and active trade unionists voted for the Conservative Party, and that we were not their enemy but wanted a constructive relationship with them. That is what motivates me to be here today.

The current Prime Minister has made it very clear to me—most recently, last Monday night—that he wishes to have a good relationship with the trade union movement. Obviously, we cannot give it everything it wants any more than we can give anyone else everything they want, but we can have a good and civilised relationship with it. As such, I am sure the Minister and many other people would agree that having a pension age of 68 is rather high. Indeed, I see from today’s papers and releases that Mel Stride, the Pensions Minister, is looking again at whether and when we should move to the age of 68. I think that is a jolly good idea.

My noble friend Lord Attlee has made reference to the pension contributions and pay, and he is absolutely right. I served for many years as a trustee, and indeed as a chair, of pension funds. A rate of contribution of 5.4% is, frankly, laughable. In the pension funds that I ran, we were looking at 12%, 13% or 14%. That is not far out of line with the police at 12% and the fire brigade at 14%. However, to achieve those contribution rates, you must have the salary to back it up. Those contribution rates cannot be paid from the current salaries, and the whole system really needs a good look at.

As I often do when I come to debates like this, I looked up on Wikipedia the Minister’s background and saw that he began his career in the Monckton Chambers. Walter Monckton was widely regarded in the TUC as probably the best Minister of Labour since the war. He was the Conservative Minister of Labour from 1951 to 1955, and his approach was based on industrial peace, talking to the unions and trying to reach a common accord within the resources of the state and the demands of the union. So, the Minister comes—as we would say in my horse racing part of the world—from a pretty good stable. I hope that some of the atmosphere of the Monckton Chambers is still within him these many years after.

I realise that a Minister can ask only for a certain amount, and a Minister in the Lords is doubly constrained, to an extent, so I have a very simple but, I believe, acceptable request. Will the Minister ask his responsible ministerial colleague to initiate informal talks with the POA to ascertain whether there is enough common ground to resume official discussions on just the retirement age in the rejected Liz Truss package of December 2016?

I am told that, of the three elements in that package, the retirement age was rather dominated by the pay increase issue. If we could manage to sort that out and set it aside, there may be some room for moving forward. To quote one of my early heroes, Harold Wilson, I am sure that “talks about talks” could be quite useful in this regard. I hope that the Minister, given the new atmosphere that is coming from No. 10 and our desire to have a good relationship with the trade union movement, will find himself able to agree to my modest request.