CIVIL SERVICE PENSIONS (AGE-BARRED CLASS) (Hansard, 3 December 1942)

§ Mr. William Brown (Rugby)

I want to raise a matter about which I put a Question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day. It concerns the treatment by the Treasury of a group of servants of this House who are employed in the Civil Service and who are known as age-barred officers. They consist for the most part of ex-soldiers who fought in the last war, and subsequently entered the Civil Service.

I will explain how the case arises and will then direct myself to the merits of the dispute with the Treasury. In the last war, recruitment to the established grades of the Civil Service was suspended for the duration of the war, just as it has been in this war. At the same time, there was a very big expansion in the work of the public service, and the gap between the civil servants who were available and the vastly increased amount of work that had to be done was made up by the recruitment of a very large number of temporary women civil servants. At a later stage in the war, the women civil servants were largely replaced by ex-Servicemen coming out of the war, and these served for some years in an unestablished and unpensionable capacity. Then, as the result of a Government decision on policy, a large number, some 30,000, were given vacancies in the established grades, and became established and pensionable civil servants. Among those who normally would have been given establishment were ex-soldiers over 50 years of age. From them, establishment and pensionability were withheld. The ostensible explanation of that was that, in the Superannuation Acts which govern the Civil Service, it is laid down that a man must put in a minimum of 10 years' established service before he can quality for even a partial pension, and since the normal retiring age of the Civil Service at that time was 60 years of age, it was held that men who were already above 50 would not be able to get in their 10 years before they retired, and that, therefore, there was no point in putting them on the established list.

1406 Two circumstances have made that reasoning wrong. The first is that, before the date when these men would have been established, if they had not been over 50, they had put in anything over 10 years of unestablished service. I submit that it is morally wrong to disregard that fact. The second circumstance which made the decision wrong was that, the age of retiring was altered from 60 to 65, so that men up to 55 years of age could have put in 10 years' established service before leaving at the age of 65. I submit that those men, probably only a few hundred at the outside, represent very hard cases. After having put in anything up to 4½ years' service in the last war, and anything up to 20 years in the Civil Service since the last war, they are now going out day by day without a penny of pension whatever. I know very well the reason why the Treasury takes the line it does. Here are our old friends "reactions" and "repercussions," the old friends we met the other day when discussing the question of equal compensation of women with men injured by enemy action against this country. But we ought not to be restrained from doing the right thing in a particular case merely because we fear there may be some reaction in some other case which is not precisely similar. Since we have tried by representations and pleadings with the Financial Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to get this matter put right without success, it leaves us with no alternative but to come to the House of Commons, whose servants these men really are.

The final thing I wish to say is that there is in the Civil Service machinery for arbitration where disputes arise between the unions and the Government, and frequently the unions have had recourse to that arbitration machinery in order to get a reasonably fair decision. It is unhappily the case that the agreement between the Government and the unions for arbitration limits the questions which can be taken to arbitration to pay, hours, and leave. Pensionability is not one of the questions which come within the scope of the arbitration tribunal. But if the Financial Secretary is unable to give me what I ask for, I ask him to agree with us that the question should go to arbitration for settlement. We will be perfectly content if we can get an independent verdict on this matter, but we do not 1407 think the Treasury should be judge and jury in this case simultaneously. We feel that these men have had a raw deal, a deal based not on the merits of their case but fear of reactions elsewhere. It is wrong that men with anything up to 20 years of service should be treated as if they were temporary civil servants and given no pension. I ask the Financial Secretary to do one of two things, to meet the case I am now putting or, failing that, that the matter should be referred to the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal for decision.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Captain Crookshank)

I warned the hon. Member the other day that it was unlikely he would ever get an affirmative answer out of me on these questions on the Adjournment, because they generally arise out of a reply which has been carefully considered by my right hon. Friend. This arises out of an answer given to him, I think, on Tuesday, when he was referred back to a reply given on 23rd June. The answer on 23rd June was that this question, also asked by the hon. Gentleman, had been considered on numerous occasions over a period of years. My hon. Friend said: I am afraid I cannot see my way to reopen the matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1942; col. 1792, Vol. 380.] Unfortunately, owing to the shortage of time, the hon. Gentleman has had to telescope the argument, and very greatly to telescope the history. There is a great deal more in it than appears from what he said, and it is unfortunate that I also have not got the time to go into that at any length. Broadly speaking, this question of the age-barred class, as they are called, refers to a certain small section of this ex-service class. Originally, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, they were engaged temporarily towards the end of the last war. There was temporary recruitment during the war of older men and women, and towards the end of the war, as may well happen now, disabled men were brought in temporarily to replace men who had to leave. These and the post-war entrants who were ex-service men were then brought in a purely temporary capacity with no guarantee whatever of permanence, much less of pension ability.

1408 However, as time went on after the war there were various inquiries into these matters, committees such as the Lytton Committee, the Southborough Committee, which led afterwards to what was known as the Guinness Agreement of 1925. Some of these questions were further considered by the Royal Commission later on. Broadly speaking, what happened was that between 1921 and 1925 opportunities were given to these temporary ex-service clerks to secure establishment through examination, which was of a very easy standard. The vast majority, of course, succeeded, and passed into the Establishment; but some either failed in the examination or, for some reason or other, did not present themselves for examination. Those, as far as was possible, were given permanent employment, but they had no pension rights accruing. From 1932 onwards further arrangements were made—that was after the Royal Commission—for the establishment of many of these officials, provided they were under 50 or thereabouts. That age limit was in accordance with normal Civil Service practice. Hon. Members will realise that that in itself was a very considerable concession: to allow establishment, and all the benefits which come from being an established civil servant, at so late an age.

It is necessary to have an upper age limit, because so long as the general retiring age is 60 it is not reasonable that there should be less than 10 years' service in order to qualify for a pension. In many cases, in order to assist these men further, they have been allowed to go on with their employment to a later age than 60—some of them to 65. Therefore, they have had employment, even if they had no pension rights accruing. I suppose that the main object of a pensions scheme is to secure for the State life long service. It is a fact that all the age-barred, to use the technical term, with long service—15 years or more, or whatever it might be—did have the opportunity of getting established, and that either they did not succeed in passing the examination or they did not take it. To establish them now would raise insuperable difficulties, because many of them have retired. They cannot be given a pension under any existing arrangements. They must all be over 60. To establish them retrospectively in order to 1409 give them a pension, would be a travesty of all existing arrangements. Unfortunately, there may be some very hard cases. One has to accept that, and feel very sympathetic. But it would be very wrong for hon. Members to be under the impression that the number is very great. 1410 There is only a small number of cases, and I am afraid, after the reviews which have been made by different Governments, my right hon. Friend is not prepared to reopen the matter.