Page 80 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

was the 1890 Police Act, where at last full respectability was achieved by a scheme

which was both contributory and funded.
The Act of 1898 relating to teachers had an interesting feature, about which the author

might be able to give a little further information in his reply to the discussion. The author
said that the scheme had throughout been centrally financed but administered locally until

pension age. Much might lie behind those words, and it would be interesting to have
more information on how that worked out in practice.

In 1909 a new difficulty came to light, which was recognized in the scheme for asylums

officers in that year. The difficulty was how to arrange that people who changed their
jobs should have their pension liabilities properly allocated to their previous employers.

That was a scheme financed on an emerging cost basis, and the arrangement was that the

previous employers had to pay an appropriate part of the emerging cost; but it
emphasized the point made in the discussion, that pension liabilities should be placed

fairly and squarely on the shoulders that ought to carry them, and should be met, so far as
possible, at the time when they accrued. In passing, he mentioned that he agreed

thoroughly with Mr Marples's castigation of lump sum benefits. The teachers in 1918 had
a new idea; they introduced a scheme which was contributory, not funded, but valued. If

there was one thing worse than an unfunded scheme, it was a contributory unfunded

scheme, where contributions were collected from the employees, in return for which they
were given a promissory note that could at any time become the plaything of politicians

and (what might sometimes be worse) of economists. The next outstanding event was the
Local Government Officers' Act of 1922. That Act was very important; it recognized

what he regarded as a vital principle. The arrangement was that contributions should be
paid which would provide the future service pensions, and, further, the generation of that

time was prepared to shoulder the liability for which its fathers and grandfathers had

forgotten to provide, namely, the cost of back service. There was nothing more
deplorable than to go back on that brave decision.

The main point in the paper itself arose, he thought, in paragraph 10, and he ventured to

repeat what had already been said, namely, that the points set out in paragraph 10 were all
answered, and to his mind most effectively answered, in paragraph 11 and in other places