My Lords, perhaps I should briefly join the debate because my report has been cited by my noble friend. I echo the comments of my noble friends and support their argument. I ask your Lordships’ House to indulge me if I revisit some of the issues from my report. It talked about the uniformed services in general, not about whether you happened to be in the Civil Service scheme or any other scheme. I talked about uniformed services—firefighters, police and the Armed Forces. My report made a simple argument that the nature of their service is unique and should be reflected in the pension arrangements that we make for them.
I have to say that if, during the course of my inquiry, I had known about the unique circumstances of the MoD firefighters, I would have referred specifically to them in my report and urged the Government to show some flexibility, support and sympathy for the special role that they play within our Armed Forces. Sadly, this issue was not drawn to my attention, so I did not make any specific recommendations about the MoD firefighters or the MoD police. If I had known about it, I certainly would have done so.
I am sympathetic to the Minister’s position. I am sure that his officials have told him that enormous complexity is involved in changing the normal pensionable age for this group of workers. However, I ask the Minister to remind himself—I know what a decent and honourable person he is—of the fact that this is fundamentally a matter of fairness and of the need to approach the issue in the right way. I do not believe that there is any substantive technical reason why we cannot look again at the role of the MoD firefighters and the MoD Police. If there is a technical issue it has to be addressed on the face of the Bill, as my noble friend suggested, or in the scheme regulations or the discussions with the relevant trade unions. Surely there has to be a way of doing the right thing for these people. The MoD firefighters currently happen to be in the Civil Service pension scheme, which has a higher retirement age than the firefighters scheme or the Armed Forces scheme. It is incumbent on us to address that issue and not to use the technical arguments as an excuse for not addressing this fundamental discrepancy.
I am not familiar with the history of all this—I am sure that there is a lot of history to it—but I wish that it had been raised with me, as I would have referred to it in my final report in the way that I have suggested. However, we now have an opportunity to do the right thing for these people, and I hope that this House takes the right course.