DRAFT POLICE PENSIONS (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS, 1961 (Hansard, 28 March 1961)

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (EARL BATHURST)

My Lords, I beg to move that the Draft Police Pensions (Amendment) Regulations, 1961, be approved. Your Lordships will see that the equivalent Scottish Regulations are in identical terms, and I suggest that it may be to your Lordships' convenience and to the 50 convenience of the House that both sets of Regulations should be discussed together. As the Explanatory Note shows, these Regulations are made under Sections 1 and 3 of the Police Pensions Act, 1948, and they are similar in form to previous Police Pensions Regulations dealing with widows' pensions and children's allowances.

The Draft Regulations before the House introduce no new principles. Their purpose is to make an increase in certain widows' and children's benefits payable under the Police Pensions Regulations corresponding to increases in the National Insurance benefits made by the National Insurance Act, 1960. These special provisions have to be made for about 9,000 widows and children—that is the Great Britain figure—because the police were excluded from the contributory old-age pension scheme which was in existence before the introduction in 1948 of the National Insurance scheme, which is of universal application. The proposal is that the Regulations should come into operation on April 3, at the same time as the increases in the National Insurance benefits.

Your Lordships' Special Orders Committee has commented, in its Report on these Draft Regulations, that the field of statutory instruments in which they operate has got into such a state of obscurity that it renders it virtually impossible to understand the amendments proposed. I can assure your Lordships that we at the Home Office, and my noble friend in the Scottish Office, deeply regret this complication, but we are faced with the difficulty that the provisions of Sections 1 and 3 of the Police Pensions Act, 1948, are also obscure and unsatisfactory.

We are advised that the Act does not permit the consolidation of the existing three sets of Regulations. This difficulty could be met only by changing the law; and, as was announced by my honourable friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State in another place on Wednesday last, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland are considering the possibility of introducing amending legislation at a convenient opportunity. Meanwhile, since we have to operate under the existing powers, the Regulations are bound to be complicated. However, that does not make it 51 any the less urgent for us to have the approval of your Lordships to these particular Regulations, so that the widows and children of policemen to whom I have referred may receive their increased payments on April 3. This is what these Regulations will achieve. My Lords, I beg to move.