Kirsten Oswald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsten Oswald on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many service personnel in each of the armed forces were affected by the increase in the qualifying age for an armed forces pension.

Mark Lancaster

Just over 90% (155,511) of all Armed Forces personnel transferred to the new Armed Forces Pension Scheme 2015 on 1 April 2015 and were therefore affected by the change in the qualifying age. For those who had to move to the new pension scheme it was agreed that those pension benefits already earned in existing schemes, up to the implementation date of the new scheme would be retained. The numbers of affected personnel, by Service, are provided below:

The change of qualifying age was set out in detailed communications materiel published in the run up to, and following, the introduction of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 2015. This change followed a review carried out by Lord Hutton in 2011 which concluded that all public sector workforces should change their pension ages for new schemes to reflect that people are living longer. The Armed Forces, along with other uniformed public sector schemes, gained agreement that this should be set at age 60.