Civil service benefits face cuts

Redundancy and early retirement benefits for Civil Service staff will be reduced after a legal bid to challenge the changes was dismissed at the High Court. More than 600,000 civil servants will be affected by the changes, which were announced last December by the Minister for the Civil Service. Two unions – the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) – had launched a bid for a judicial review over the decision, arguing that their terms for redundancy and early retirement should be protected under human rights legislation. Lawyers for the 270,000-member PCS and 35,000-member POA said that rights to some redundancy conditions had been accrued through length of service and so should be classed as a “possession” according to human rights laws and should only be “interfered with” if there was an overriding public interest. Judge Mr Justice McCombe acknowledged that benefits under the old scheme were possessions as defined by the European Convention and that the changes were interference, but he added that the changes were justified and the new scheme was valid.

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