News releases
Top brass urge government rethink on pensions
(Left to right) Forces Pension Society General Secretary Major General John Moore-Bick, Chairman Vice Admiral Sir Michael Moore and Assistant General Secretary Captain Malcolm Farrow
At 3pm today (30th November 2010), a letter to the Prime Minister was hand delivered to Downing Street bearing the names of five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, other senior military figures and Honorary Members of the Forces Pension Society calling for a rethink on military pensions.
The letter was composed by the Forces Pension Society (FPS) a non-profit organisation which represents the pension interests of the wider Armed Forces community, signatories include: Admiral the Lord Boyce, Field Marshal the Lord Inge, Marshal of the RAF the Lord Craig, General the Lord Guthrie, General the Lord Walker, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Julian Oswald, Admiral Sir Brian Brown, Lieutenant General Sir Robin Ross, Mrs Sara Jones and The Baroness Dean, Honorary Member signatories included: Martin Bell, Kate Adie, and Joanna Lumley.
The letter calls on the government to reconsider the change in indexation from RPI to CPI for the Armed Forces, it points out that they will be disproportionately disadvantaged in comparison to people working in the rest of the public sector, because military pensions start to pay out at a younger age, FPS suspects this detail could have been overlooked.
The letter also calls on the government to stop the practice of confiscating the pensions of military widows when they re-marry, pointing out that the cost of doing so would be a drop in the ocean (a fraction of 1%) compared to the savings which the government stands to make from the change in indexation.
Earlier in the day, at a lunch held in the Houses of Parliament, the President of the Forces Pension Society, General Sir Roger Wheeler GCB CBE, former Chief of the General Staff, reiterated these representations and said that the armed forces was not looking for special treatment but fair treatment.
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