Page 68 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

All the staff associations would write to all their members and all the members would

write to their Members of Parliament. Could any Government be blamed for being
somewhat chary of undertaking such a process?

His second point was less important. One of the reasons which had been suggested for
unification was to promote interchange, and in that connexion he was going to utter the

grossest heresy. He thought that far too much lip service was paid to the new doctrine,
which everybody was supposed to advocate, of promoting interchangeability. Of course

there should be interchangeability, but it would be over a very small area of the different

services. Some people were eminently fitted for transfer, and would benefit their new
service by transferring to it, but the great majority would end where they began, for the

excellent reason that they had spent a large part of their service in acquiring the technique

of that service, and it would be a waste of their talents to send them out to other fields.
Without pressing the point too far, he said that, in the small area where interchangeability

was desirable, interchange would not be stopped by the existence of different
superannuation provisions; that difficulty could always be overcome if there was a

sufficient reason for getting the right man into the new job.
Thirdly, as an individualist, he disliked the idea of being straight-jacketed into a uniform

scheme. He was not speaking for the management, whose interests would be served by

having a uniform scheme at the lowest common denominator. He thought, however, that
the interests of the members of the different schemes were best served by various

individuals in the different services hammering away at their different points of view and
getting improvements in their respective schemes. In the Civil Service they The

Development of Public Superannuation Schemes 29 had scored a point recently by
securing something for their widows. The other public services had not yet got there but

no doubt they would do so ; they would be stimulated by the efforts made by the civil

servants and secure similar benefits under their own schemes. They should obtain those
benefits, however, by improving their own schemes, the framework of which was suited

to the requirements of their own services, and not by being brought within a uniform

scheme.
Mr R. W. Abbott confessed to finding it ironical that, during the five years of office of a

Government devoted to planning, there should have been so much unplanned