Public Service Pensions Bill

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

With your guidance, Mr Speaker, which I always take very seriously, I will move directly to Lords amendments 78 and 79.

The Lords amendments would give the civil servants in the MOD fire and police services a normal pension age of 60 in the new schemes. The Government do not believe that this is the correct way forward.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Is the Minister seriously stating that an MOD police or fire officer should be treated differently from a police or fire officer not employed by the MOD?

[Sajid Javid]

As I make progress and explain the Government’s position, I will come to that point.

The Government do not believe the amendments to be the correct way forward, either for the taxpayer or the forces themselves. I will briefly set out some of the key reasons for our position. Allow me first, however, to reassure both hon. Members and the work forces themselves that the Government understand their concerns. We have listened to the representations and reflected on the discussions in another place, and I want to make it absolutely clear that we recognise the unique position of these work forces and the important role that the defence fire and rescue service and the Ministry of Defence police play.

My colleague Lord Newby met DFRS and MDP officers to talk through their experiences on the ground and the demands of their roles. There is no doubt that these public services deliver a valuable service to the armed forces and the country more generally. The nature of the work they are called on to deliver is often very difficult and at times can be dangerous. On occasion, some members of these work forces might find themselves putting their lives at risk. No one in the House is suggesting otherwise, so let us not be distracted from this important discussion by cherry-picking anecdotes and citing emotive examples of the work involved, because that is not the issue being discussed today.

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[Sajid Javid]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that the general pension reforms in this Bill should not be carried out lightly. As I progress and we have this debate, I hope he will be reassured that the Government have taken this issue seriously and will set out their case carefully.

The issue at hand is the appropriate treatment of those work forces’ pensions. The amendments would actively reduce the normal pension age for individuals joining them. It would not be a minor reduction, but a reduction of five years from the pension age put in place for those work forces by the Labour Government in 2007. It would also be a reduction of seven years from the pension age that they would otherwise see when the new scheme comes into force in 2015. That approach would run counter to the need to control the risks associated with increased longevity, which all parties agree must be addressed. I believe that all parties in this House support the aim of controlling those risks. The amendments would make those work forces unique in the public sector, with their pension age falling at a time when everyone else’s is rising.

In response to the issue being highlighted, the Government have taken measured and appropriate action. Rather than making a knee-jerk response to fit with the legislative time scale of the Public Service Pensions Bill, the Ministry of Defence has written to the forces. Its letter states that the MOD is willing to consider how the current pension age of 65 might be maintained for those individuals when the new pension schemes are introduced in 2015. I believe that is a reasonable offer by the Government, and we will of course stand by it. It is our duty as parliamentarians to look at the whole picture. Pensions are only one part of the remuneration and employment package of those work forces.

[Sir Bob Russell]

The Minister is saying that the retirement age of a current Ministry of Defence police officer would remain at 65. So that I can better understand, what would the retirement age for a constable in the Essex police be?

[Sajid Javid]

To be clear, what I have said is that the Ministry of Defence is willing to consider keeping the age at 65. It has not yet made that decision, which would require further engagement, although it has set out how it intends to engage. As I think my hon. Friend knows, under these proposals the answer to his question about a police officer would be 60, as opposed to 65 for civil servant pension schemes.

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[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. I cannot answer on behalf of the previous Government, but I can say that the change was carried out by ministerial order. There was no open, ongoing debate on the matter like the one we are having today. A written ministerial statement was issued by the then Minister for the East Midlands, Gillian Merron, on 26 July 2007, and I can find no record of any Labour MP complaining about the change at that time. If my hon. Friend is making the point that the Opposition’s credibility is severely damaged because of this, he is making it very well.

[Sir Bob Russell]

It was not connected to the pensions issue, but I raised with Labour Ministers at the time the stupidity of cutting the size of the MOD police, whose numbers in my constituency have been reduced from 33 to one.

[Sajid Javid]

We all know that my hon. Friend is an assiduous Member of Parliament, and that he reviews all legislation carefully. I thank him for making that point. He will no doubt have looked at these matters closely at the time, and I welcome his looking at the legislation today.

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[Chris Leslie]

Although the Minister had quite a long preamble, not necessarily on these amendments, all I would say is that, clearly, with life expectancies increasing, it is in general reasonable to ask people to work for longer before retirement. There is no disagreement on that general principle. We need to adjust the public service pension schemes so that they remain sustainable, which is why we support so many of the changes Lord Hutton recommended. However, as hon. Members know, there are certain categories of workers for whom having longer careers is not realistic because of the physical demands of their professions. There are some physical tasks that it is not reasonable to expect a 67 or 68-year-old to undertake.

The Bill acknowledges that in part, by excluding three categories of worker— firefighters, police officers and members of the armed forces—and fixing their normal pension age at 60. That is a rational position, but there are other professions that we believe the Government should keep under review because they also can be exceptionally physically demanding, such as NHS paramedics and care workers. There is clearly a need for some flexibility to accommodate scheme-specific capability reviews for these associated professions, and it is a great shame that the Government have not allowed the latitude for that in the Bill. We debated that in Committee.

Lords amendments 78 and 79 are aimed at correcting what most people thought to be an oversight: the fact that, for some bizarre reason, Ministry of Defence firefighters and MOD police officers are excluded from the definitions of firefighters and police officers in the Bill. There are about 2,000 MOD police and 1,000 or so MOD fire and rescue scheme workers who essentially carry out the same crucial, but onerous, tasks as police and fire service workers under the auspices of the police authorities and the Home Office.

[Sir Bob Russell]

In addition to the point the hon. Gentleman has just made, does he agree that, particularly with regard to Faslane and the nuclear submarines and installations there, MOD firefighers and police officers carry out duties that the civilian police and firefighters do not have to do?

[Chris Leslie]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because I think that is indeed the case, but my general point is about the physical demands on these individuals. Today we are debating whether their retirement age should be, as the Minister thinks, 67 or above, or whether it should be at 60—the same age as for other firefighters, police officers and members of the armed forces. It is a simple proposition and the House has the power to make a judgment on it today.

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[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Like me, he has constituents who have applied for the early release scheme and been mucked about. That is why we should settle the matter today on the Floor of the House, instead of allowing it to be sent off into the long grass where we can prevaricate some more before failing to reach the conclusion that people need to be treated with consistency.

The question of consistency underpins everything. There is recognition that other police and firefighters need a lower normal pension age than those in less physically demanding roles. People who do the same jobs, but for the MOD, need to be recognised in exactly the same way. I urge the Government to observe the spirit of the Hutton report, accept that this was an oversight, and do the right thing by our MOD police and firefighters by accepting the Lords amendments. I hope, even at this very late stage, that the Minister will capitulate.

[Sir Bob Russell]

It is regrettable that no Defence Minister is here, because we could be putting the cart before the horse. What is crucial is the fitness for the purpose for which our MOD firefighters and police are employed. That should be the first, driving principle, and then we can move on to retirement ages and pensions. Does the country really want its nuclear bases to be defended by people of my age? Is it really safe for someone of my age to put out a fire on a nuclear submarine? The clear answer is no. It is therefore regrettable that the MOD is not represented in this important debate. This debate must be important, because I have missed the welcome home parade of 4th Mechanised Brigade. As a member of the Defence Committee, I always wish to welcome home our troops. I hope the fact that I am here will be read as an indication of how seriously I take this debate.

I draw the attention of the House to what Lord Hutton of Furness said in the other place:

“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.”

He went on to say:

“Surely there has to be a way of doing the right thing for these people.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 February 2013; Vol. 743, c. 570.]

I came to this debate fully intending to vote in support of the Lords amendments, but their unintended consequences could well lead to our MOD firefighters and police being financially worse off, albeit while retiring at a younger age. I will therefore take the Minister at his word—he is a Minister whom I trust—and give the matter further consideration in the spirit and intention of what Lord Hutton has said.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain why he thinks MOD police and firefighters could be worse off if their normal retirement age is set at 60? That has been repeated a number of times, but I do not believe that it has been explained.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Yes. As I understand it, the retirement age is one anomaly, but the contributions towards pension funds are another anomaly. To ask the House to have its cake and eat it might be asking for too much.

[Gemma Doyle]

I do not believe that that is actually in the Bill. I do not believe that pension contributions will be affected, if the House votes to allow MOD police officers and firefighters to retire at 60. As we know—the hon. Gentleman and I represent some of these people—they want to be able to retire at 60.

[Sir Bob Russell]

The hon. Lady used the words, “I believe”, and although she may well be right, it is because of the uncertainty that I welcome the promise from the Minister, whom I must take at his word, to give this matter further consideration. It is worth taking that on board.

[Gemma Doyle]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Well, the hon. Lady and I must beg to differ. I do not want her to think that her support for MOD firefighters and police officers is greater than mine. I was arguing in support of the MOD police when the previous Labour Government were cutting their numbers—so I can do without those sorts of comparisons.

I ask the Minister to give a categorical assurance on the concerns raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I particularly welcome the comments from the hon. Members for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who raised questions that have not yet been fully answered. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) and the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) also raised concerns.

[Simon Hughes]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work on this matter. I have had a chance to check the answer to the question from the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle). If the amendment were accepted, it would immediately transfer the people in question out of the civil service definition. They would get the benefit of an earlier retirement age, but they would also get the disbenefit of other comparative advantages. That is why we need a negotiated conclusion, not one-line changes to the Bill.

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[Sir Bob Russell]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend. When I referred to the unintended consequences, I was not expecting a detailed exposé of what one of them would be.

With some reluctance, I am taking the Minister at his word about the unintended consequences, and I urge the House to do the same. I take on board everything that Lord Hutton has said subsequently about his not being aware of the issue. Trusting the Minister, I think that our MOD firefighters and police officers could conceivably end up better off. I repeat my basic point, however, because the MOD needs to move quickly to reassure the nation about our military depots and nuclear installations. I have seen Faslane at first hand, and we do not want a Dad’s Army—people my age—defending our nuclear installations or trying to put out fires in military establishments.

[John McDonnell]

I welcome the new enthusiasm on both sides of the House for negotiating with trade unions. We have seen 18 months of industrial action followed by the imposition of a pensions settlement on a large number of civil service workers. I therefore welcome this enthusiasm for negotiating the issue out.

The Government’s policy on pensions was twofold: they wanted to bring together a consistent retirement age across the services, while, as part of public service reform, ensuring a process of modernisation, with retirement schemes reflecting the requirements of service delivery. From what we have received today, I think we are reintroducing an element of chaos into the retirement age. Far from ensuring consistency, we seem to be building anomaly upon anomaly. Far from pragmatically reflecting the reality of delivering a service, we are about to undermine another service.

On delivery, we should learn the lessons of 2007. I did not support the increase in the retirement age for firefighters in 2007, just as I have not supported this legislation. The lesson that the Fire Brigades Union taught us was that once we increase the retirement age in such a physically demanding job, apart from having a physical effect on those workers and their lives—and on their families, too—we do not save money, because people take ill-health retirement, as others have said. At the end of the day, this is not part of a modernisation process; it is a step backwards.

The other issue raised was consistency—this argument that there will be consistency across the uniformed services. However, that was never the case anyway, because we argued for the Prison Service and uniformed services in the health service to be included, but they were excluded. The issue of consistency is drawn even more sharply by the exclusion of the group of staff we are discussing in this debate, who are clearly part of a uniformed service. They are being discriminated against purely on the basis of who employs them. Firefighters who are employed by local government via a fire authority are within the scheme at age 60, whereas those employed by these other bodies are not. That is not just policy making on the hoof; to be frank, it is incompetent policy making.

As for the disbenefits, when a general agreement is taken into legislation in this way there is always the facility for the employer and others to adjust contribution rates, albeit as part of a negotiated settlement, but we usually legislate and then iron out the detail of the contribution rates, with the matter usually being resolved through an adjustment of the employer’s contribution.

Let me turn finally to the process. The Minister helpfully tried to respond, but there was insufficient detail. If there is to be negotiation on this issue, we need at least a commitment about the time scale. There has to be a limited time scale, over the next three months, in which we can resolve these anomalies and give this group of workers some security, because the current insecurity is causing concern.