§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what his estimate is of(a) the aggregate liability for pensions and (b) the increase in liability for pensioners in the most recent year for which information is available for (i) the police, (ii) the Prison Service and (iii) the Immigration and Nationality Service. [63883]
§ Mr. Denham[holding answer 24 June 2002]Police authorities are in the process of estimating, for the first time, their accrued liabilities for pensions in preparing their accounts for the year ended 31 March 2002. The Government Actuary's Department estimated as at 31 March 2001, that the liability in Great Britain for the police pension scheme was around £25 billion.
Those employed in the Prison Service and in the Immigration and Nationality Service participate in the principal civil service pension scheme, which is managed by the Cabinet Office. Cabinet Office civil superannuation resource accounts 2000–01 (HC554) give a capitalised value of the liabilities of the scheme as at 1 April 2000 of £58.6 billion. A breakdown of this amount between different parts of the civil service is not available.
There is no baseline against which to measure a change from one year to the next, so no figure for the increase in liabilities is available.