By Andrew Argo

SCOTLAND’S POLICE officers are regarding the proposed increase in their minimum retirement age from 50 to 55 with “reluctance and inevitability,” their spokesman said yesterday.

Joe Grant, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, was commenting on the changes due to be introduced from April.

The Government is proposing that new officers entering the service from then will have to complete 35 years of service before they are eligible to retire, rather the 30 years at present.

With officers making pension contributions from the age of 20, this will mean their minimum pension age will be increased from 50 to 55.

Workers throughout Britain may have to extend their working years because of longer life expectancy, and the state retirement age could be raised from 65 to 67.

A Government commission on pensions is expected to recommend this change when it publishes its report today.

A row is brewing among public sector workers, who for the same reason might lose their right to retire at 60 and, like people in other sectors, work for longer. Business leader are pressing the Government to make this change.

Mr Grant said police officers accepted they were not immune from developments in society through which people were living for longer after retiring.

“We accept that the minimum retirement age has to go up for police officers like it has for people in other areas. It is something we accept with reluctance and inevitability. This is something the Government wants to do, although there are still details of the change which have to be decided.”

The general secretary said there were other aspects of the proposed changes about which officers had stronger feelings.

One of these concerned pension arrangements for officers who have to retire early because of ill health. Presently, once officers are declared unfit for police service they receive their pension, but under the proposed new system there will be a two-tier ill-health pension.

If someone is deemed unfit to continue as a police officer, but fit enough for another form of employment, he or she will receive a lower level pension.

And to receive the full pension an officer must be deemed unfit for any form of work—police or civilian.

Mr Grant added, “We are against the two-tier ill health pension because we don’t feel it is needed at all. We favour continuing with the existing arrangements.”

One of the other proposed changes from next year is that police officers’ pension contributions will be changed from 11% to 9.5% of their pay.

Police pension contributions will still be the highest of all public sector workers, which mainly range from 6% to 8%, to reflect the shorter working lives of officers.

Under the existing system an officer who retires with 30 years’ service can choose between a pension of two-thirds of their final salary and no lump sum or half of their final salary and a lump sum of two and a half times the final salary.

A constable at the top of their pay scale on £30,000 a year is therefore entitled to a pension of £20,000 a year or of £15,000 a year and a lump sum of £75,000.

A chief superintendent at the top of their scale on £80,000 a year would receive a pension of £53,333 a year or a pension of £40,000 a year and a lump sum of £200,000.

The retirement benefits of existing officers will remain unchanged after April 1.

The benefits for officers joining the police after that date have yet to be confirmed.

Financing police pensions is a big issue for the Government and local authorities as there is not a police pension fund.

Serving officers’ pension contributions are not invested but are recycled through Government coffers to pay the pensions of retired officers and their dependents.

Last year Tayside Police spent nearly £14 million on pensions through Government grant aid, an increase of £4 million from the previous year. This was because of an increase in the number of officers reaching retirement as a result of a surge in recruitment 30 years ago.

And last year the force was paying pensions to just under 1000 former officers and their dependents.