Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, on what grounds his Department's Transforming Rehabilitation reforms provide a guarantee to the administering authority of the Local Government Pension Scheme in respect of past service liabilities that will become the responsibility of community rehabilitation companies, and future accrual of benefits for transferring staff in the event of a failure by those companies to pay those contributions or amounts.

Under the National Agreement on Staff Transfer, all probation employees who transferred to the new probation structures on 1 June 2014 retained their membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme. This applied to probation employees in both Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS).

On 2 July 2014, a Written Ministerial statement was laid before the House, setting out the Secretary of State's guarantee that the Department will meet any contributions due to the Local Government Pension Scheme in relation to probation employees who have transferred to the CRCs whilst in Government ownership in the event of CRC insolvency. This facilitated continued pension provision under the Local Government Pension Scheme for these probation employees. The Written Ministerial statement can be accessed via:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm140702/wmstext/140702m0001.htm

The Ministry of Justice has engaged as appropriate with the European Commission and other relevant parties regarding the pension proposals for probation employees.