Sir Steve: Government still dragging its heels on pensions equality

On July 4 the government published a tardy ministerial statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Walker v Innospec case two years ago.

The statement omitted to rectify the longstanding inequality of treatment for widowers’ pensions.

In the Walker v Innospec case, Mr Walker took the Innospec Pension Scheme to court because, as a member of a same-sex couple, he was not entitled to the same pension if his partner were to die as a member of an opposite sex couple would receive.

This was because the law only gave him entitlement for service since 2005, when civil partnerships were created.

In July 2017, the Supreme Court found in his favour. Two years later, the government has agreed to implement the necessary changes for public sector pension schemes. Private sector pension schemes are also expected to follow the judgment to the extent that they do not already do so.

The government’s statement noted that it “supports equal treatment of survivors of all legal relationships, and parliament provided that survivor benefits must be built up equally for all of these groups on accruals from December 5 2005 (when the Civil Partnership Act 2005 came into force)”.

It added: “The Walker judgment has clearly changed the legal position relating to survivor benefits in respect of same-sex unions, and the government has acted.”

The statement also referred to a wider review of “survivor” benefits in pension schemes took place in 2014. The government has only now responded to it, and it has decided to take no action in response to the inequalities set out in that review.

Widowers will lose out as a result of the inaction. They will, for many years to come, generally get poorer benefits following the death of their wife than a widow would get following the death of her husband.

Putting this inequality right would cost public sector pension schemes several billion pounds, Sir Steve, Royal London’s director of policy, said.

The written statement revealed that the government “will not make any further retrospective changes to the existing provisions in respect of occupational pension schemes to equalise survivor benefits”.

It admits that “differences in survivor benefits for accruals in past periods will remain for some”.

Sir Steve said the response shows that the government is dragging its heels on pension equality.

“When leading politicians can find billions of pounds to spend on their spending priorities, it is deeply disappointing that the money cannot be found to put right a historic inequality in the pensions system,” he said.

Sir Steve added that the report, published in 2014, made clear that there is still inequality between men and women in pensions. “Yet five years later the government still does not think that this issue is worth addressing. A generation of widowers will lose out as a result,” he said.