§ Mr. RookerTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) if he will make a statement on the pension arrangements for staff of Government Communications Headquarters who formally served in the armed forces;
(2) if he will make a statement on the calculation of reckonable service for pension purposes of civil servants who previously served in the armed forces during peacetime.
§ Mr. BrookeThere are separate pension schemes for civil servants and for armed forces personnel. Staff employed by the Government communications headquarters are, in general, members of the Principal Civil Service pension scheme. However, an individual formally serving254W with the armed forces would normally be a member of the armed forces pension scheme and receive appropriate pension benefits from that scheme.
The armed forces pension scheme provides for the transfer of accrued pension rights by those who have left the services since 1 April 1975. As the armed forces pension scheme is a member of the public sector transfer club, a civil servant who transferred benefits from the armed forces scheme would receive broadly year for year credit in the Civil Service scheme. The armed forces scheme has no provision for those who left before April 1975 to transfer pension benefits to another scheme. It is not normally possible, therefore, for a civil servant to reckon service with the forces that ended before April 1975 towards a Civil Service pension, unless the individual concerned comes within the scope of the limited concessionary arrangements provided for under the Superannuation Act 1946 and the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1948. The main concessions in regulations made under these Acts are that those who entered the Civil Service between 3 September 1939 and 30 June 1950, after serving in the armed forces during that period, could reckon their forces service as if it had been unestablished service in the Civil Service; and to enable national service to reckon if it interrupted service in the Civil Service.