Value our pension scheme before changes, say teachers
By Richard Johnstone | 15 February 2012
A trade union is taking legal action to force the government to have the Teachers’ Pension Scheme valued before implementing its controversial planned changes.
As part of efforts to cut the public
sector pensions bill, the government intends to increase teachers’ pension contributions
from April, and switch the final salary scheme to one based on career-average
earnings. It produced a final pension offer in December.
The National Association of
Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachershas
not accepted the proposal. It argues that the valuation is overdue and is needed to show if the
scheme is sustainable or not.
The judicial review will consider
the union’s argument that it is the government’s statutory responsibility to
conduct a valuation every five years.
The last one was completed in
2006, and general secretary Chris
Keates said that the government had ignored ‘repeated requests’ for one.
She said this had deeply angered
teachers, and a pre-action letter has now been served on the Treasury, Education
Secretary Michael Gove and the Government Actuary’s Department.
‘It is simply unacceptable and
irresponsible for a government to embark on changes which will have such a
profound adverse impact on the financial future of teachers and their families
without having evidence to demonstrate that a problem even exists,’ she added.
‘Not only is the government
failing to meet its obligations to teachers, it is failing in its duty to act
in the interests of the public.It is, however, probably safe to assume that if a valuation would have
provided evidence to support the government's changes, it would have produced
it.’
The NASUWT is also part of
the group of unions that have mounted a separate
challenge to another reform. The government changed the change of inflation index for public
sector pensions from the Retail Prices Index to the narrower Consumer Prices
Index last April, a move unions argued was unlawful.
The High Court ruled
that the switch was legal last December, but the group of ten unions has appealed. This will be heard in the Court of Appeal on
February 20.
