§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many civil servants were required to resign in the interests of the Public Service in each year since 1974.
§ Lord PEART"Reignation in the interests of the public service" is not a recognised term in the Civil Service. Civil servants may however be required to retire prematurely; that is, before the minimum retirement age, in the public interest on grounds of redundancy, on structural grounds or on grounds of limited efficiency. The numbers of non-industrial civil servants who were prematurely retired for these reasons in the period 1974 to 1978 are set out in the table below.
1974 1975* 1976 1977 1978† 248 323 453 1,018 757 *From 1975 the figures exclude those for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. †The figure for 1978 is that which is currently available: this may be updated as further details become available. The corresponding figures of industrial civil servants, to whom premature retirement on grounds of redundancy only applies, arc not available centrally.