I wish to speak in support of amendments 1, 2 and 9. Amendment 2 is straightforward: it seeks to ensure that people are not forced to retire beyond the age of 65, as most of our work force have planned to retire then. On the argument that the amendment is unaffordable, let me remind hon. Members of what Hutton said about the 2007-08 changes. He said that they are likely to reduce costs to taxpayers of the pension schemes by £67 billion over 50 years, with costs stabilising at around 1% of GDP or 2% of public expenditure.
The other issue involved here is what our priorities are. The last figure I had for how much the unfunded public sector pension schemes were costing us was for 2009-10, when it was less than £4 billion. Some 60% of gross tax relief on pensions goes to higher rate taxpayers—that is £22 billion. The cost of providing tax relief to the 1% of our population who earn more than £150,000 was double the amount we are funding with regard to the public sector unfunded pensions—that is £8 billion.
So the fact that we are willing to subsidise the higher paid—the rich—while forcing others to work longer and cutting their pensions at the same time reflects our priorities. That is why I have tabled the amendment: I do not accept the settlement or the Government’s rationale for these proposals.
Amendment 1 was eloquently discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), and I must declare an interest at this point: I am an honorary life member of the Prison Officers Association. One point that the POA made, which we made on Second Reading, is that if we increase the pension age for prison officers, we lose money because more of them will become injured and more will go off sick, and more cost will be incurred in compensation. The actuarial figures are there almost to prove it, so it is anomalous not to include prison officers. The point about psychiatric nurses is the role they play, particularly in institutions such as Broadmoor, where they are dealing with the most difficult cases—physical challenges—within the NHS. I find it bizarre that we are expecting police officers to retire “early” at 60—I hope we do not go to that—because of the physical nature of their jobs in dealing with criminals, yet when those criminals go into prison it appears that they no longer provide a physical challenge to the officers dealing with them then. The situation is anomalous, which is why I support the amendment to include psychiatric nurses.
I also tabled amendment 9, and this is specifically for the Fire Brigades Union. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has said from the Front Bench, the Government have set up, in agreement with the unions, the working longer review in the NHS and the physical assessment in respect of the fire service. Evidence is piling in to those reviews—independent academic evidence, and details of physical tests that have been undertaken—to demonstrate that it is tough to do the job at 55, let alone at 60. I have seen some of the evidence put forward in the fire service review. When the previous Government increased the retirement age to 55 it was on the basis that there would be more firefighters doing preventive work and people could be redeployed into that work. This year, only 15 posts nationally have been available for redeployment, so redeployment is not an option. These people are still out there doing that physical job, and it is unacceptable to push the retirement age to 60. That is why amendment 9 would ensure that the pension schemes would be able to take into account the reviews currently taking place and that we would be able to adhere to a lower retirement age, particularly for firefighters and others as they are justified.
I am interested to hear what the Government’s responses will be, so I shall finish on this next point. Overall we seek to ensure that there is justice in the Bill, and that is certainly not the case at the moment. I reiterate that the Bill is increasing the contributions and increasing the length of time that people will be working. Given the life expectancy in my constituency, a large number of my constituents will not reach retirement age. Already, a third of all members across the schemes retire within three years of when they should normally do so because they cannot physically continue in the job. They therefore live on reduced pensions and in some poverty. My constituents will contribute more, work longer, most
probably have a reduced pension at the end of it and have to retire early. That is an unjust deal when we are subsidising the wealthy through tax relief on their pensions.