Prison Officers

(asked on 26th June 2018) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2018 to Question 152833 on Prison Officers, what assessment he has made of the effect on prison officers of the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission excluding the Prison Service from the category of uniformed services in its 2011 report.


Answered by
 Portrait
Rory Stewart
This question was answered on 3rd July 2018

No assessment was made of the effect on Prison Officers after the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission report.

The published report made particular reference to the front-line services of the Armed Forces, Police and Fire Service as these workforces had a Normal Pension Age (NPA) of below 60. The recommendation was that this should be raised to a minimum of 60, with the expectation of further reviews and potential increases in the future. Prison Officers were not specifically mentioned in the report as their NPA was already set at either 60 or 65 (apart from those who were in post on or before 30 September 1987 who exceptionally retained Reserved Rights to an NPA of 55). In 2007 the Prison Officer trade union (The POA) signed up to a NPA of 65 for new recruits taken on after 1 July 2007, who were auto-enrolled into the Career Average scheme.

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