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.
