Forces Pension Petition
 

Not sure if you guys that are serving can sign it, I hope you can, found on the Aden Veterans site (me 1966-1967)

please read: it effects all

Protect Military Pensions

Nothing to add, just replying to keep this one near the top of the page for a while.

Surely this petition should be on our own Govt's site and not on some private organisation that once you sign asks for a donation?


Oh OK - just checked and the Govt site doesn't seem to have any petitions running at the moment....perhaps something else that went with cost cutting

Sorry but while this policy is going to no doubt hoop me big time but with what's actually going on financially in the country at the moment this sort of greedy sanctimonious clap trap is the last thing some of the really hard up folk need to hear.

Instead of telling us what folk are going to lose because of this policy change tell us the real bloody numbers because I bet they are not that feckin hard up.

SFFP, they are going to screw you, they did it to me, I left the air farce in 1976, my pension payable at the age of 55, turned 55, found they had changed the pension age to 60, whilst always protecting their own, we should have done what we where going to do in in the early 70's, when the Russian spy was PM

Sounds to me that you really are Seldomfitforpurpose!!!:=

The point made by this petition and in the Forces Pension Society recent request to government (The Forces Pension Society - Top brass urge government rethink on pensions) is valid.

If you accept the premise that HM Forces personnel should be able to receive a pension around from 40 years of age then you must also accept that this change of index severely disadvantages HM Forces personnel far more than others. Those that would argue against such right should read this (http://www.forcespensionsociety.org/...know-edit3.pdf)

Whilst it is well accepted that we are 'all in this together' the public sector pay freeze and changes to future terms & conditions mean we are already taking the hit, yet this measure singles out HM Forces for extra pain yet bankers are left to bask.

Loyalty is clearly a one way street.

If you can't beat 'em...join em! Are there any banking courses available on ELCs? How hard can it be?

Make Them Pay...
 

Having worked out how much my personal contribution is to the bank bail out I have spent the last 12 months and will spend the next few years costing the banks time and money. Every visit to the bank begins a new trial of strength with numerous requests and time consuming problems which normally ends up with a huge queue behind me a mass of disgruntalled customers.

Don't get mad...get even...

5d2d

Curiously, that website is blocked from service PC's. :rolleyes:

Can someone please clarify a couple of points concerning this. Firstly I apologise for not keeping abreast of the news/situation.

Do these changes to pensions effect ALL pensions currently being paid, or those that will be paid in the future?

Surely if they change the terms on either current pensions or those that servicemen are about to collect either now or in the near future, the MOD is in breach of the terms and services you signed up for. ie breech of contract. Surely changes such as this can only be brought in for those people currently entering service? I am more often than not wrong so would love to know what the take is. Thanks

Yes, ALL public sector pensions will now be indexed to CPI not RPI.

Includes those already being paid.

It really is a change in terms & conditions but reference to "index linking" does not state specifically which index and so legally, if not morally, they can use any index they like.

In some penison documents a reference to indexing to "retail prices" is not even sufficient to hold them to RPI since the CPI is also based on some retail prices.

This change hits past, present and future members of HM Forces, their dependants and widows harder than any other sector of society.

As another poster put it recently "We just got mugged".

Henry,

I have my own thoughts about the change to CPI - we are all in different circumstances. As a youngish 'pensioner', I grudgingly accept that as we are in a financial maelstrom together, I have 20 years or so to address any potential shortcomings in my own financial future.

The g'ment also changed much else to do with pension legislation that doesn't get as many column inches. For instance, the link between the state pension and earnings, scrapped by Maggie in 1980, will be restored. The annual increase will be protected by a (so called) 'triple lock' - the annual rise will be in line with earnings, prices or a 2.5% increase (whichever is the greater).

Aeronut,

I always cringe when I hear 'legally' used re our T&Cs:

In my 'Your Pension Scheme Explained (05)' it clearly states the following;

(Index-Linking) Annual increase in pension value in line with movements in the Retail Prices Index (RPI). Changes are made in April, using the previous September's annual headline rate of inflation.

S4G

but what legal standing does a pamphlet have?

Where are our "legal" T&C s anyway? AF Pensions acts? QRs?

Legal authority for armed forces pensions
 

Not an expert on this, but pending expert answers, the authority is the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 2005 or the 1975 Scheme as appropriate. AFPS 05 has a read across to the Pensions (Increase) Act 1971 for the method of adjustment for inflation.

I suspect the pamphlet referred to is only a statement of the position on the date when it is produced.

The rules/info that made up these booklets i.e. 'Your Pension Scheme Explained' were sourced primarily from JSP764. It would, seemingly, take a legal (there's that word again) challenge to establish whether the RPI index-linking reference (entitlement?) is indeed a preserved right against those who were in the AFPS for the time RPI was referred to (maybe RPI is still referred to in the JSP) - any budding lawyers out there?

Was there not a recent ruling about this in favour of certain private sector pension schemes?

S4G

Sand4Gold, interesting.

Class action anyone? Lead by the Forces Pension Society perhaps?

JSP 764 does contain many references to the RPI. A difficulty is that arguments of that nature could equally apply to other public sector workers.

baffman

But surely that doesn't matter. The more it applies to other public sector workers the bigger the problem for the government.

The devil is in the detail. Gorgeous George has already stated that he intends to introduce this via legislative means, so he accepts that the change could only be implemented if AFPS scheme rules were (effectively) overwritten by legislation. In effect, he is changing the law.. so therefore, how then, can the law be wrong? If FPS presses for a Judicial Review, then good luck to it. I am a member and I have heard nothing yet - I wonder if anything can be done on the basis of the small print in a JSP. I doubt it.

With regards to attacking changes relating to benefits already accrued (and I stand to be corrected here), given the size of AFPS, any change would require trustee approval anyway (S67 of the Pensions Act 1995 refers). It prevents schemes from amending their rules in ways that cut members' benefits retrospectively - such cases would in all likelihood end up in court. I imagine that that is where FPS might be thinking; after all, most of its members are more mature members/ex-members.

However, the Pensions Regulator has already hinted that it won't get involved in any DB scheme change process based on this factor, so it might be that particular exercise is nothing more than a quick nod to process. Although it has powers to penalise an employer who fails to comply with the consultation process, if a change is made to the scheme rules without the affected members being consulted, then any change affected by the failure to consult alone need not be revised on that basis. So, no mass e-mails to the Trustees then. I'm not sure how the 'Executive Board' of AFPS sits legally alongside the fiduciary responsibility of a normal Trustee anyway; given that they are paid by the piper.

For ex-SP who are already retired the ability to consider options is gone and they have no options; and thats what makes this tasteless, charmless, immoral if not (exactly) unlawful. Those who are younger can (must) consider other options to mitigate future loss - assuming they have already calculated and quantified a retirement on RPi linked figures. They should at least rethink and reconsider their Investment/spousal Private Pension/AVC strategy for instance and just be a lot smarter about things financial in general.

http://www.official-documents.gov.uk.../0210/0210.pdf

Younger people will now have long realised that not just this particular (pension-linking) rule has changed, but the whole damned set of rules has been wiped clean and rewritten. Future pensions in payment is the least of their worries when entire careers have been put up for auction and career dreams scratched out at the stroke of a pen. Old-ish giffers like me were/are lucky by comparison. I imagine how I would have felt if I were suddenly told that everything I had been aspiring to was turned to dust. Its not just the rules - the entire game has been renamed, rebranded, put in a different box, and the whole bloody price has gone up anyway. If there ever was any doubt, it really is now all about #1. And thats the dawning, sad realisation - the ethos has always been 'us', not 'me'.

I am at Odiham for the next few days giving FSA 'Making the Most of your Money' presentations; OC PSF has more info if anyone wants to pitch up.