Page 47 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

Independent medical and dental practitioners are also brought within the 16 The

Development of Public Superannuation Schemes scope of the scheme. Members'
contributions are at the rate of 6% for non-manual and 5 % for manual employees

(corresponding with the previous 'officer' and 'servant' classifications respectively);
employers' contributions are 8% and 6% respectively, as against 6% and 5% under the

1937 Act.
Pension and lump sum benefits, based on average remuneration over the last three years

of service, are again related to contributing and non-contributing service, the latter

attracting benefits at half the rate of the former. Pension per completed year of
contributing service is at the rate of 1/80 (maximum 40/80); lump sum, subject to the

following, 3/80 (maximum 120/80).

(Further Regulations, now in draft form, will provide for increases in these maximum
limits, on the lines of the Superannuation Bill, 1949·) Compulsory retirement is at age 60

for female nurses, midwives, health visitors and physiotherapists, and age 65 for all
others, with optional retirement 5 years earlier subject only to 10 years' service (including

hospital service prior to 1948).
The important new feature is the automatic provision of a widow's pension, payable to

the widow of every male contributor who has (normally) at least 10 years' service. This

pension, subject to adjustment on account of relative ages, is at the rate of one-third of the
pension drawn by the former contributor, or which would have been drawn had he retired

on the day preceding the date of his death in the service. It is secured by the compulsory
abatement, in the case of men married at the date of retirement, of two-thirds of the lump

sum which would otherwise have been payable ; in the case of married men dying in the
service, a similar abatement is made in the death benefit (equal to the accrued lump sum)

which would otherwise have been payable. Where a widower retires, the lump sum is

reduced having regard to the period for which he was at risk. Under all schemes
previously considered (except the Superannuation Bill, 1949), a widow's pension can be

secured only when a contributor elects, at the time of his retirement, to surrender a part of

his pension, and subject to proof of his health. The new scheme provides for a benefit in
cases previously excluded, i.e. to widows of ill-health pensioners and of contributors

dying in the service, and these are the two classes for whom, generally speaking, the