The ever-increasing cost of the Old Bill (From Durham Times)

The ever-increasing cost of the Old Bill

3:15pm Friday 5th June 2009

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THE unsustainability of the police pension system was in the news this week.

Richard Lambert, director- general of the Confederation of British Industry and a former editor of the Financial Times, said the generous police scheme would not be considered remotely viable in the private sector.

He added that inevitable future public spending cuts, combined with obligations to police pensioners, will render it an increasing burden on the operational budgets of police forces. He estimated that pension payments will rise to twofifths of the police service’s officer salary bill by 2020. That can only mean cuts in the police service, more specifically cuts in the number of officers and a consequent rise in crime.

While Government took steps last year to protect individual police forces’ budgets from the rising tide of pension commitments, the key issue of the contributions officers make to their pension and the length of time they could be in receipt of a pension has not been tackled.

Police do make substantial pensions contributions but their length of service is comparatively short and their potential retirement long.

Add to that a continuing propensity for early retirement on grounds of ill-health, then it is easy to see how commitments are getting so far ahead of contributions.

This problem is not new. Ten years ago, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw admitted privately to the editor of this newspaper that the police pensions system could not continue, but he also did not volunteer to do anything about it himself. It is a buck that has been passed from Home Secretary to Home Secretary.

The issue is, of course, politically sensitive. The Police Federation is very adept at making out the special case for its members, a case which the public has sympathy with.

Police do a difficult job that many others could not countenance.

But the new financial landscape, and particularly the growing hole in the public finances, means the pensions’ nettle has to be grasped.

The 30 years’ service rule, which allows officers to retire on a full pension aged just 50, has been amended. New entrants must now work 35 years, but that still means many officers being able to retire in their mid-50s at a time when most employees in the private sector are faced with working well into their 60s and beyond in order to draw a comparable pension.

Increasingly, it is not fair that these public sector workers, above all others, enjoy these benefits. The country cannot afford them.

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