UNITED KINGDOM
The UK Treasury has confirmed it will meet with Public Service unions after a court ruled that elements of the Government’s controversial 2015 pension reforms were discriminatory.
The Treasury said the Government respected the decision of the Supreme Court to refuse its appeal after the transitional arrangements in the reformed pensions schemes were ruled discriminatory.
The case, initially brought by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and some judges, successfully argued that an overhaul of the Firefighter’s Pension Scheme in 2015, which mirrored reforms across the public sector, discriminated on the basis of age as it included transitional arrangements.
These meant the changes — including a move from a final salary to a career-average defined benefit — were not applied to people within 10 years of retirement age.
The Treasury said the transitional protections were intended to ensure people close to retirement age were treated fairly.
These protections allowed members who were closest to retirement at the time the new pension schemes were introduced to remain members of their old schemes, but the court found that those who were too far away from retirement age to qualify for these protections had been unfairly discriminated against.
The Treasury previously said extending the protections to all pension scheme members would cost about £4 billion (A$7 billion) — a figure the unions dispute.
It said the reasons for the 2015 reforms remained, as Public Service pensions were “a significant cost for the taxpayer, now and in the future”.
“The judgement does not alter the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the cost of Public Service pensions is affordable for taxpayers and sustainable for the longer term,” the Treasury said.
General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Mark Serwotka said the decision was a fantastic win for the FBU.
“It is also clear that many thousands of PCS members in the Civil Service pension schemes, and other Public Service schemes, have also been discriminated against in the same way as FBU members at the time that pension reforms were imposed in 2015,” Mr Serwotka said.
London, 18 July 2019
