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On 30 March 2023, the House of Lords is due to debate the following question for short debate:

Earl Attlee to ask His Majesty’s Government what are their reasons for setting a retirement age of 68 for newly recruited prison officers; and what assessment they have made of whether that retirement age is appropriate and in the public interest.

1. Why is the retirement age for prison officers set between 65 and 68?

Prison officers are members of the civil service pension scheme as a result of their employment by an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice, HM Prison and Probation Service. As such, they have a normal pension age linked to their state pension age (SPA).

A newly recruited prison officer may thus draw the full occupational pension on reaching the SPA, which is between 65 and 68 depending on their date of birth, and they must have had at least two years’ membership within the scheme to be entitled to receive a pension.

Amendments to the SPA were made by the Pensions Act 2007, which provided that the SPA would increase from 65 to 68 in stages over the period 2024 to 2046. However, according to current government plans these changes may be implemented sooner. Following a periodic review of the SPA in 2016–17 led by John Cridland and a separate report from the Government Actuary’s Department released shortly afterwards, the government announced plans in 2017 to bring this timetable forward. Consequently, the SPA would increase to 68 between 2037 and 2039.

At the same time as announcing this change, however, the government also said it was a “big decision with significant consequences”, and that it would therefore carry out a further review before bringing forward the rise in SPA by 2039. This second periodic review, undertaken between 2021–23 and this time led by Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has reportedly been completed but is yet to be made public. The deadline for its publication is May 2023. There has been speculation in the Financial Times this month that the government may seek to delay the 2039 deadline.

In contrast to prison officers and other public sector employees, police officers, firefighters and members of the armed forces can retire at age 60, as provided for in section 10 of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013.

2. Who is objecting to these changes and why?

The Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers (POA) has led criticism of the retirement age for newly recruited prison officers being set at 68. The POA has cited issues such as the physical nature of the occupation and the levels of violence prison officers can face as reasons why prison officers should not be required to work until their late 60s.

In recent evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee, Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the POA, said:

If I join now as an 18-year-old recruit, I have to work for 50 years on the frontline before I can access my full pension, because our retirement time is now 68; it is related to the state pension.

We must be the only uniformed frontline service in the entire country that expects staff to work in what I class as the most volatile, hostile workplace environment in western Europe—for 50 years. That is not practical, and it puts off a lot of people. You don’t realise when you join at a young age that you are going to have to work to the ripe old age of 68.

Mr Fairhurst also highlighted the disparity between prison officers and certain other public sector employees, and the distinction drawn between them by the 2011 review of public sector pensions led by Lord Hutton:

If you are going to class us as such an essential service to the public that you cannot allow us to go on strike, why would you then expect us to work to the age of 68? The police can retire after 30 years’ service, or aged 60. The fire service can retire aged 60. They are a frontline uniformed service. Why can’t we retire aged 60?

Lord Hutton neglected to include us as a frontline uniformed service. He classed us as civil servants who are deskbound. We are not. We are unique. We face violence every single shift. The police do not. They might go through the entire week dealing with pleasant people, and of a weekend they have to deal with a bit of violence when the pubs spill out. We deal with violent people every single shift, and we are expected to do that in our late 60s.

The POA has argued that the pension age is a reason why many prison officers are leaving the occupation.

Similar arguments were put forward by several MPs during a Westminster Hall debate on this issue in November 2021. Gordon Henderson (Conservative MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey), who secured the debate, said:

The truth is that prison officers deal every day with individuals who have been locked up to keep the rest of us and our communities safe. Too often, those men and women face violence and hostility just for doing their job. Despite that violence and hostility, which would be challenging for fit young people, these dedicated emergency workers are still being told that their retirement age will rise to 68.

[…]

It is worth mentioning that of the nearly 79,000 prisoners currently incarcerated under the Prison Service, 30% have been convicted of offences involving violence against the person, so it should come as no surprise that attacks on prison officers are increasing. According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 8,476 assaults on prison staff in the 12 months to September 2020, which is 35% of all incidents of assault that occurred on the prison estate. Some 823 of those were serious assaults. […] [I]s it really fair or safe not only to expect a prison officer in their 60s to restrain violent criminals in their 20s or 30s, some of whom have very little left to lose even if they carry out the most violent acts of which they are capable, but to entrust the safety and wellbeing of other officers and prisoners to the ability of that prison officer to restrain those criminals?

This was also similar to the perspective voiced by several peers during oral questions in the House on the subject in June 2022.

3. How has the government responded?

The government maintains that the pensions arrangements for prison officers should continue to be in line with the majority of civil service occupations. Speaking in the same Westminster Hall debate cited above, then prisons minister Victoria Atkins noted the low employee contribution rate of the civil service pension scheme and said that the POA had reportedly signed up to the previous increase in pension age to 65 in 2007:

The retirement age for prison officers is linked to their pension arrangements. Prison officers are classified as civil servants, so are members of the civil service pension scheme. This is a defined-benefit scheme that pays a pension for life without investment uncertainties. It has one of the lowest employee contribution rates across the public sector; employers make contributions of 27% into the scheme on behalf of the employee.

When a pension age of 65 for new entrants was introduced in 2007, I am told it was done so following great consideration of the prison officer role and the demands it makes of prisoner officers and other operational roles in the civil service. I am told that the POA signed up to this scheme. Following the introduction of the alpha scheme in 2015, the normal pension age for prison officers is set at state pension age, which is between 65 and 68.

Ms Atkins also noted the previous failed attempt to reform prison officers’ retirement age in 2016. As part of a prospective deal negotiated by then Secretary of State for Justice Liz Truss, the retirement age for prison officers would have been reduced by up to three years from 68 to 65; this was alongside pay proposals and a retention and recognition package. The POA put this offer to their members, but it was rejected by over 65% of those polled.

Further, Ms Atkins said that any lowering of the pension age for prison officers would “invariably mean that their pension contributions would have to increase”. She argued that prison officers’ pension contributions are less than half those of schemes for firefighters or police officers.

The secretary of state for justice, Dominic Raab, took a similar line when responding to questions on prison officers’ pension age in February of this year. Citing the evidence that the POA gave to the Justice Committee, Mary Kelly Foy (Labour MP for City of Durham) asked whether the government would amend the “cruel, degrading and utterly dangerous” requirement for prison officers to work until the age of 68.

In response, Mr Raab said his door was open to the POA and others to discuss various issues but that “we are not going to revisit the retirement age issue”.

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