POLICE PENSIONS (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 1964 (Hansard, 23 March 1964)

§ THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT)

My Lords, I beg to move that the Police Pensions (Amendment) Regulations 1964, a draft of which was laid before this House on 4th March, be approved. These Regulations are entirely consequential upon the passing of the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act, 1964, and I shall not need to detain your Lordships long in introducing them. Their object is simply to keep the appropriate provisions of the police pensions code in the same relationship as they have always been to the National Insurance scheme. The age up to which police children's allowances are payable has, over the years, been the same as the age up to which National Insurance children's allowances are payable, and in order to maintain this similarity the draft Regulations enable children's allowances under the 1042 Police Pensions Regulations to be paid up to the time when the age of 19 is attained. The Regulations also have the effect of enabling police children's allowances to be increased by amounts corresponding to the revised rates of National Insurance children's allowances provided by the recent Act.

Perhaps I may explain here that the police were excluded from the contributory State pension scheme which was in existence before the present National Insurance scheme was introduced in 1948. Consequently a small number of children of policemen are not entitled to benefits provided under the National Insurance arrangements because the father was not able to make the necessary number of contributions before he died. Police authorities are given discretion in these cases to make payments under the Police Pensions Regulations related to these benefits which the children would have been eligible to receive had the contributions been made. The draft Regulations have the effect, therefore, of enabling these discretionary payments to be made at a rate corresponding to the higher level of children's allowances introduced by the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act, 1964. The draft Regulations also make some minor and consequential amendments following upon the Act. The Police Councils for England, Wales and Scotland have been consulted and are in agreement with the proposal that these amendments should be made. The Regulations provide that they should come into operation on 30th March, 1964; that is, on the same date as the changes in the National Insurance scheme will take effect. I beg to move.