Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the changes proposed in the consultation on Public Service Pensions: Police Pensions (Amendment) Regulations 2022 on the (a) value of police officer pensions and (b) length of service required by an officer to access their pension in full.

The government is committed to ensuring that public servants, including police officers, have access to good pensions that are affordable and sustainable in the long term. That was the basis on which the police pension scheme, alongside the main public sector pension schemes, was reformed in 2015 following the recommendations of the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission.

The government is taking steps to remove discrimination on the grounds of age, associated with the transitional protection arrangements linked to the 2015 pension reforms, which was subsequently identified by the courts during the McCloud and Sargeant litigation. Following a public consultation, it has been decided that eligible members will be offered a choice of scheme benefits for the remedy period. From 1 April 2022, all those in service in the relevant workforces will be members of the reformed pension schemes, ensuring equal treatment from that point on. The government believes this is the most appropriate and proportionate way of ending the age discrimination identified.

The Home Office consultation concerns the amendments to the police pension scheme regulations that are required to enact the first phase of this established policy.

The consultation opened on 8 November 2021 and will close on 2 January 2022. We will consider the responses carefully before confirming the regulation amendments.

Since the reformed schemes were introduced in 2015 many police officers are already members of the 2015 police pension scheme and will continue as such.

The 2015 police pension scheme and the other reformed public sector schemes are some of the most valuable available in the UK: backed by the taxpayer, index-linked and offering guaranteed benefits on retirement, comparing very favourably to the typical private sector scheme.