John Pugh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Pugh on 2016-02-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on implementing the recommendations of the Government Actuaries Department relating to firefighters’ pensions in its report dated 28 August 2015.

Mike Penning

The Government has determined that the principles of the Ombudsman’s decision in the Milne v Government Actuary’s Department case should be applied to other affected individuals, including retired firefighters and police officers in England.

Redress will be paid to affected individuals via their relevant pension scheme, and we will be providing fire and rescue authorities and police forces with necessary grant to cover the cost of these payments.

Pension administrators will have now completed the majority of calculations and the majority of payments to individuals will be made by April 2016. This does not preclude payments being made earlier in many cases. I trust that authorities will make payments as soon as is practical and understand that some have already done so.