Courts and consultation
The consultation, published on 16 July, is on proposals
to remove age discrimination from the Local Government
Pension Scheme (LGPS) in England and Wales. The courts
have found transitional protections given to older
members in the judicial and firefighters’ pension
schemes directly discriminated against younger members
in those schemes.
The government confirmed its intention to remedy the
difference in treatment across all of the main public
service pension schemes in a Written
Ministerial Statement to Parliament in July 2019.
MHCLG together with HM Treasury and the Ministry of
Justice all issued consultations on how such
discrimination would be addressed.
The consultation from MHCLG is called Local Government
Pension Scheme – amendments to the statutory
underpin. It sets out how the discrimination
identified by the McCloud /
Sargeant case will be removed. The operation of the
existing underpin will be amended to ensure it remains
appropriate for a wider application. GAD produced a
series of worked examples (Annex D) which set out how
the proposed underpin would work in different
situations. Examples range from people who retire from
active service at 65 to deferred retirement; who may or
may not require an underpin uplift.
Remedy design
As part of this project, pensions experts in GAD also
produced a specific supporting document called
Local Government
Pension Scheme McCloud / Sargeant litigation:
Equalities impact. This is designed to help MHCLG
understand how LGPS members are likely to be affected
by the proposed McCloud underpin remedy from an
equality point of view.
GAD Actuary Jenny Bullen, who co-wrote the report,
said: “This was a complex and important contribution to
MHCLG’s consultation. We provided support in remedy
design and assistance in considering the appropriate
treatment of technical issues.
“In our specific worked examples, we also considered
the impact of the revised scheme design on different
member profiles.”
Consultation timeline
The consultation, which is open for 12 weeks, will
close on 8 October 2020.
