Originally Posted by
Easy Street
For the avoidance of doubt *your earned pension rights cannot be taken away and there is no need to leave the service to protect them*.
Easy Street
I think the nail you hit here reflects the lack of trust between the MoD and AFPS members and to be frank, there is good reason for this.
Fine print is one thing but the MoD can hide behind errors of omission too. A
current example is for AFPS75 members serving on PA Spine terms (including transfers from Spec Aircrew to PA) - the MoD never amended the Medical Pension rights for the newer scheme in the same manner as they did for the normal enhanced pension. So if you look-up the AFPS75 medical pension tables you will see enhanced tables for all bespoke pay and pension spines (eg docs, lawyers, dentists, SF etc) and can easily find the current one for Spec Aircrew. But only Spec Aircrew -
no PA Spine.
In recent years the absence of an amended ill-health pension table (there is no mention of the PA Spine anywhere) the MoD has defaulted to a position of
'no enhanced medical pension for PA Spine'. This policy is even enforced for those transferred from SA terms to PA Spine by the direction of MoD. Leave healthy and you get the enhanced pension you were expecting. Leave unhealthy whilst PA Spine, be it battlefield injury, MoD negligence, terminal illness or whatever then you are effectively removed from the PA Spine at exit. There is no other precedent for this and single-service commands recognise that this as more of an accidental omission than deliberate sculduggery but the MoD has made its decision - the absence of any wording as to how PA Spine are treated for Medical Pensions equals an opportunity to save money on the backs of the families who probably need it the most.
The lack of trust is at the root of these problems and the very core of this thread is around an unfair decision taken by the MoD to the detriment of its Armed Forces Pension Scheme members that it tried to fight through the courts, only to lose.
Both the Armed Forces Pension Board
(15 members on that board, ever heard anything positive from them on member's rights?) and the MoD cannot be trusted - they make no attempt to protect the rights of scheme members and have effectively abdicated that role to the courts.