Martyn Day – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Martyn Day on 2016-02-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the comparative effect of changes to civil service pensions on prison officers who joined that scheme under Classic but have been switched to the Alpha scheme and colleagues with the same length of service who have not been switched.

Andrew Selous

Alpha is the new Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme, which now applies to the vast majority of Civil Servants (including prison officers). Only those who are close to retirement have been able to remain in previous schemes or to defer entry to the Alpha scheme. This has always been made transparent and is considered fair as this group of staff are likely to have already started to make plans for their retirements which would be unduly impacted by a change in arrangements at this stage. There are therefore no plans to make such an assessment.