Page 31 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

piecemeal introduction into local government of benefits of this nature is viewed with a

certain amount of disquiet, and proposals for appropriate amendments to the 1937 Act are
Already being considered.

6. Such a revision, it may be expected, will have repercussions on existing local-Act
authorities; an effort will undoubtedly be made to bring them into line with other

authorities. It is equally certain that such a move will be seriously opposed, for authorities
already complain bitterly against the gradual alienation of many of their powers and are

not likely to view with complacency the loss of local autonomy over their superannuation

schemes. There is, moreover, the consideration that the statutory imposition of a standard
scheme would place a very serious financial strain upon local-Act authorities, since

service now excluded by them would presumably become reckonable in the same way as

under the 1937 Act. (At present, if a former local-Act contributor enters the service of
another local authority, any service previously excluded becomes reckonable by virtue of

the provisions of the 1937 Act, and the financial strain thereby falls upon the new
employer—a deterrent to fluidity of staffs.)

7. There can be no doubt that looked at impartially; the existence of local- Act schemes is
an anomaly. As stated earlier, they are still, in general, considerably in advance of the

present standard scheme; but this merit will disappear if and when the 1937 Act is

amended to incorporate the National Health Service benefits, and the differences will
then appear as demerits.

Probably the most adverse feature is the discriminatory treatment of past service, as
compared with the 1937 Act, which provides that all service under any local authority

shall count for superannuation purposes either as contributing or as non-contributing
service. It is obviously undesirable that a relatively small The Development of Public

Superannuation Schemes 5 proportion of local government employees should be treated

less favorably than the majority, and a strong case thus exists for the introduction of a
Standardized scheme for all authorities.

Unless, however, the new scheme were to provide benefits better, on the whole, than

those under any superseded scheme (which is financially impracticable) it would be
necessary to give existing contributors an option to retain their former superannuation

conditions. Such an option could, following police and fire service precedents, be