HC Deb 18 November 1982 vol 32 cc475-80

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Goodlad.]

8 pm

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

I wish to bring to the attention of the House a matter that is not unimportant to those concerned. I have given the Minister as much advance notice as possible of the nature of the issue. I must, however, refer briefly to the background.

It is a sad and ironic fact that Northern Ireland was deprived, by a fluke, of local government. It so happened that the former Parliament and Government known as the Stormont constitution was taking steps to absorb virtually all the functions of local government at the very moment when its own existence was terminated by this House. It was an automatic consequence, but not a consequence intended by Government or Parliament, that the responsibility of this House has extended since 1972 over a province of the United Kingdom virtually destitute of local government as that term is understood elsewhere.

A minor consequence, though an inevitable consequence, of virtually abolishing the old local government system in the Province in 1972–73 was that the great majority of the staff who had served the local authorities were transferred to the Northern Ireland Civil Service. I should add that they were in no way less able than the colleagues whom they joined in the Civil Service or than their corresponding numbers on this side of the water.

When the changeover took place, a specific undertaking was given to those officers that after the transfer they would enjoy conditions of service not less favourable than those previously enjoyed in local government "taken as a whole." I believe that there is no dispute about the nature of that undertaking or about the fact that at the time when the officers were tranferred and that undertaking was given, one of their conditions of service was that it would extend to the age of 65.

Recently, a process has been initiated in the Northern Ireland Civil Service to reduce the compulsory retirement age during the next four years from 65 to 60. That raises the question whether that process should be applied to the officers of the appropriate grade—I think staff officer and above, or the equivalent—who are transferees from the former local government service. Does the reduction of their compulsory retirement age from 65 to 60 represent a deterioration in their terms of service "taken as a whole"?

I have given a good deal of thought to that point, and I can only come to the conclusion that it represents a real and substantial deterioration. After all, those individuals had every reason to plan their lives, and to make preparations for the end of their careers and for their retirement, on the assumption that they would continue to serve, that their pensions would continue to accrue and that they would be in full earning capacity, until the age of 65. I cannot see that it is not bringing about a deterioration in the conditions of service if an employee who has properly anticipated serving to the age of 65 is told that, on the contrary, he is to be compulsorily retired at an earlier age—perhaps even five years earlier than he had envisaged.

I am sure that the Minister will not underestimate the importance of that proposition on the ground that it affects relatively few people. Naturally, 10 years after the transfer, relatively few people will be affected by the modification of the assurance that they were given on transfer. However, I would be astonished if the Minister gave the smallness of the numbers affected as a reason for disregarding considerations that would be accepted if more people were involved. It so happens that one of my constituents is involved; but there are others involved all over the Province. Most of them are now occupying responsible positions; some of them have positions in the all-important relationship between the administration at Stormont and those district councils which are the vestigial remains—one hopes that they will not be so for ever—of Northern Ireland local government.

So I set on one side the consideration of numbers. I must then ask whether the Government have been, or should be, influenced by any anomaly that might be created between those transferees and their colleagues in the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Obviously, if the Government were to interpret the undertaking in the way in which I argue it should be interpreted, we could have two members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in other respects comparable except that one is a transferee and the other is not. The one would be obliged to retire at 60 and would have his prospective retirement compulsorily brought forward; the other would not. It cannot be disputed that that is an anomaly—blessed word. The one person would be treated differently from the other. A small minority would be treated differently from the great majority.

However, an anomaly is objectionable only if there are no sufficient grounds for it, and in this case there is the sufficient ground that the minority were given an assurance which it is the Government's duty to maintain.

Thus I have narrowed the ground on which the Government can stand, if they do not take the course that I press upon them, to that part of the terms of transfer that refers to conditions of service "taken as a whole". The Minister may seek to argue—although I hope that he will not—that in other respects, by reason of being members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service since 1973, the transferees' conditions of service have been more beneficial and advantageous than those they enjoyed when they were local government officers.

I do not interpret the expression "taken as a whole", in dealing with a person transferred from one service to another, as capable of being met on that type of consideration. Of course, if a special improvement was made in what would otherwise have been the conditions of service of these individuals in consideration of the fact that their age of retirement would be reduced, then I should say that the two must be taken together, that the reduction with its disadvantage and the special or compensatory concession must be taken together.

I can quite see the force of the words as being necessary to avoid what might be an absurd rigidity, but those words cannot be taken to mean—I am sure that they were not taken by the individuals concerned to mean—that if, when a lower compulsory retirement age is imposed, we can discover ways in which someone is now better off in the Northern Ireland Civil Service than he was 10 years ago in the local government Civil Service, we can put that into one pan of the scale against what we are doing in reducing that person's retirement age and then, appeal to the term "taken as a whole" and, say, in the words of the parable: friend, I do thee no wrong".

The Government are doing wrong to those individuals. They are defeating the natural meaning of the legitimate expectations—indeed, the guaranteed expectations—with which they were transferred from one service to another. That is why I am taking this opportunity to ask the Government to reconsider what I understand is their provisional view—that the reduction of the retirement age should apply to the transferees as it applies to other members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

I hope that even if the Minister cannot tonight give me grounds for hope of a change of heart on the part of the Government, they will nevertheless consider the arguments that have been advanced in the debate. Otherwise—I say this in no grudging or minatory manner—there will be a number of individuals terminating their official service to Northern Ireland who will genuinely and with what in my opinion are good grounds believe that at the end of that service they have been cheated out of what they believed they were entitled to expect and upon which they have built. It could not be to the advantage of the service as a whole that the Government should take a course which would have that effect. I hope that I shall receive some encouragement when the Minister replies.

8.12 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. John Patten)

It does not surprise me that the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has chosen to pick the terms and conditions of a group of civil servants as a fit subject for tonight's debate. The right hon. Gentleman has taken a close interest in the affairs of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland for a long time. He was good enough not long ago to pay a substantial and substantive compliment in the House to the Northern Ireland Civil Service for the work that it does. I am happy to agree with him, and I am pleased to report that that has been well received. I can also report that in the in-house magazine of at least one Department in the Northern Ireland Civil Service—the Department of Health and Social Services—the right hon. Gentleman's view of its efficiency was headline news. That in-house journal is circulated among 50,000 whole-time equivalents.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell

I hope that my views of the Foreign Office and its proceedings in Northern Ireland will receive similar and favourable publicity.

Mr. Patten

I regret to say that I am not on the mailing list of the in-house magazine of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but I dare say that it sits somewhere that it can be consulted.

I should like to take this opportunity, I hope with the right hon. Gentleman's concurrence, to pay tribute—it should be paid often-to the work of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, especially for the work that it has done in the past 10 or 15 years. It has been a difficult period of civil and other disorder in Northern Ireland and the service has kept going throughout the bombings. The service has kept going—not limping, but as a Rolls-Royce—through bombings, blastings, mayhem and sometimes murderous attacks on civil servants. That has been an object lesson to civil servants and Administrations around the globe. We should not allow ourselves to get away with simply saying that they have done great service for the people of the Province. They have done great service for the people of the United Kingdom.

I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me early and full notice of what worried him. That has made it all the easier to prepare and, I hope, deploy the arguments, even though I may not convince the right hon. Gentleman with all of them.

When the local government officers were transferred to the NICS in 1973 on the reorganisation of local government, their terms and conditions of service, as the right hon. Gentleman said, were properly protected by legislation. The Local Government (Transfer of Officers) Order (Northern Ireland) 1973 provided that the terms and conditions of service offered to them in the Civil Service should be no less favourable, taken as a whole, than the terms and conditions that they enjoyed in local government immediately before they were transferred. Most of the officers who were transferred were transferred to the Department of the Environment. Some went to other Departments. The Departments offered them the same conditions and terms as applied to the rest of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Although there were differences in detail between these and local government terms and conditions—local government terms and conditions were not all the same within the Province—the Departments considered that, taken as a whole, the Civil Service terms and conditions were not less favourable.

The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned retirement rules. In local government in 1973 the retiring age was generally 65. In the Civil Service, the retiring age was 60, but the practice, as opposed to the principle, was that an officer, provided he was, to use the deathless prose of the trade, fit and efficient, could normally remain until he or she was 65, but he or she did not have the right to do so. It was a matter of policy, not of right. There was a difference here, but it had no practical effect as long as the policy of the Northern Ireland Departments was to allow officers who wished to do so to stay on to 65.

In any case, in the opinion of Departments, any detriment in the retirement conditions was clearly arid substantially offset by improvements in terms arid conditions elsewhere. The right hon. Gentleman reasonably asked for some examples. There were decided improvements in pension provision. The right hon. Gentleman is rightly worried about his constituent and others who are caught in this way. Under the Civil Service pension scheme the local government officers were able to pay for their widows' pensions at a much reduced rate and were also able, if they wished, to pay contributions from annual salary rather than in one lump sum due on retirement. Those arrangements were of great benefit to those who had transferred. In the case of some of those who were transferred, there were undoubtedly increased career opportunities. Equally, others benefited from increased emoluments—in other words, more money.

I am afraid that it is not possible, as the right hon. Gentleman may wish, to draw up an exact balance sheet. He and I, as well as people working in the Northern Ire rand Civil Service, can draw up a list of competing and conflicting calculations to prove this, that or the other, but no clear calculus can provide a balance sheet.

There is some case law to which we can look, even if the figures prove nothing in this context. There was an appeal under the Local Government (Transfer of Officers) Order (Northern Ireland) 1973, which was heard by an independent tribunal in 1976. That tribunal was set up by the then Department of Manpower Services. Its chairman was Mr. James Lloyd McQuitty QC, who was afforced by Sir Harold Black, a senior retired civil servant, and Mr. W. J. Blease, now Lord Blease of Cromac.

In that case, the appellant had, exceptionally, enjoyed terms and conditions of service in his own branch of local government that did not require him to retire at 65. It seemed almost to confer on him the delightful rights of life fellowship that people used to enjoy in Cambridge and Oxford colleges. I have it on good information that, as late as the 1950s, some people continued to work in Northern Ireland local government past their eightieth year—almost a Gladstonian style of employment.

That gentleman claimed that he had suffered detriment on entry to the Northern Ireland Civil Service because the retirement age was 60 and he could only remain on after that subject to being fit and efficient, but had to retire at 65. The tribunal carefully considered the arrangements for retirement in the Civil Service, and said that arrangements must be considered in the light of the substantially enhanced value of the appellant's pension rights. It added: in all the circumstances, the appellant was at all material times, if anything, better off than before his transfer.

What of the reasons for the change in retirement policy in the Northern Ireland Civil Service? In common with the United Kingdom Civil Service, the Northern Ireland Civil Service has been contracting. This has had a number of obvious effects. It has substantially reduced recruitment opportunities for school and college leavers as well as for the unemployed. It has also reduced promotion opportunities and movement up the ladder for younger officers. In these circumstances, it was thought right to change the policy of allowing officers to stay on after 60—the official retiring age—and to require those above certain grades to retire at that age. That is the background to the policy decision to alter the practice of allowing people to continue beyond 60, and it has been the practice common in most, but not all, cases since 1973.

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is not proposed to do this in any hasty or arbitrary way or without any regard to the expectations and commitments of people approaching retirement, to whose needs he correctly referred. Indeed, Departments have tried to strike the best balance between these considerations and the wider needs of the service in the Province.

The reduction in the age until which officers can stay will, therefore, not be introduced at a stroke. It will be introduced progressively year by year. Officers of 63 years and over will be required to leave in the summer of next year; those aged 62 on 1 April 1984: those aged 61 on 1 April 1985; and those aged 60 on 1 April 1986 when these new and carefully formulated arrangements become fully effective. All officers will be given good notice—at least six months—and on retirement will be eligible for their full Civil Service pension.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell

The Minister said that all officers will be given six months' notice. Does that imply that there is still an element of discretion to retain for a time the services of an individual civil servant, or will the six months' notice be a mere formality? That is a substantial point.

Mr. Patten

I am happy to inform the right hon. Gentleman that it is within the competence of the Civil Service to decide that someone who is fit and efficient may remain past the age of 60 if that is deemed to be in the interests of the service as a whole. Various safeguards are built in. It is important to consider the people who have a relatively short service, both in the Northern Ireland Civil Service and in their previous job in local government, and to ensure that their pension entitlement is not badly hit by early retirement. We have attempted to deal with that. We want to allow those who are fit and efficient to stay on to complete 20 years for pension purposes, or until the age of 65, whichever is earlier.

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that there has been the fullest consultation with the trade unions and the Northern Ireland Civil Service Whitley machinery. The unions do not oppose the general trend, although they have pressed for some amendments in detail, including exemption for former local government officers.

Following normal discussions in the Whitley machinery, the unions had a meeting with Sir Ewart Bell, the head of the NICS. The unions have since been informed that the new arrangements are to go ahead and that former local government officers cannot be excluded.

It is fair that former local government officers should be included. They have been fully integrated civil servants for nearly 10 years. They have shared the benefits of improvements in Civil Service terms and conditions and will continue to share in any that may be introduced in future for as long as they remain in the service.

I can understand their wishes, but they should not seek to exclude themselves from any detriments which from time to time their directly recruited colleagues in the NICS may be called upon to accept. Indeed, it would be unfair to their colleagues if they were exempted from new arrangements. I hope that local government officers can accept that.

I hope that the right hon. Member for Down, South will accept that we have endeavoured to give the fullest possible answer to his arguments. We welcome the care and attention that he has devoted to individual cases and to the NICS as a whole.

The situation is as I have outlined it. Whilst those coming into the service in 1973 may have hoped to be allowed to stay on until the age of 65—perhaps even longer in some circumstances—they did not have the right at that time. We have made the best arrangements that we can to help smooth the transition.