GAD produces the Quinquennial Review of the Great Britain National Insurance Fund every 5 years. The review is intended to provide information to help the government understand potential risks to the future sustainability of the Fund but does not make recommendations for the Fund.

Our report looks at future National Insurance contribution receipts and benefit expenditure over the next 65 years, to highlight the factors likely to affect its future development. The most recent Quinquennial Review (published in October 2017), concludes the position is much like the previous review.

Benefit expenditure

Projections indicate that the long-term benefit expenditure is expected to exceed National Insurance contribution receipts by an increasing amount, equivalent to around 1% to 1.3% of GDP because of the:

• increasing levels of life expectancy and the large cohorts of people reaching the state pension age from around 2030
• projected increase in the average state pension for people who start to receive their state pensions
• increases in the standard rate of basic state pension and new state pension relative to the increase in earnings because of the ‘triple-lock’ policy

Further funding

GAD’s analysis concludes that the National Insurance Fund is now projected to be exhausted about 3 years earlier than previously expected. We anticipate the Fund balance is expected to increase until around 2025 without Treasury grants being required.

However, we project that without extra support in addition to National Insurance contributions, the Fund balance will fall rapidly to exhaustion in around 2033. Treasury grants would be required from around 2030.

Expertise from the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) helped protect the pensions of a large group of public sector workers, when they were transferred from one employer to another.

GAD provided advice to Supply Chain Co-ordination Limited (SCCL), the limited company set up by government to manage the NHS Supply Chain service. The NHS Supply Chain contract was let in 2006 to DHL (Excel Europe). At that time around 2,000 people transferred to the private sector under TUPE – the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations. These regulations protect the rights of workers being transferred but they give limited protection in respect of pensions.

Transferring staff

When the DHL contract ultimately expired 13 years later in March 2019, around 550 of the original public sector staff had transferred to other private sector employers or back to the public sector. These moves were again carried out under TUPE. The staff received further protection under HM Treasury’s Fair Deal policy which protects pension arrangements for public sector staff compulsorily transferred to other employers.

Support and advice

GAD actuaries who specialise in staff transfers advised SCCL on various pension aspects of the re-let of the NHS Supply Chain contract, which has resulted in staff coming back to both the Civil Service pension arrangements and the NHS pension arrangements under Fair Deal. We also advised on alternative pension arrangements to meet Fair Deal requirements for staff who could not re-join the relevant public service pension scheme.

Bulk transfer options

Having advised SCCL on the bulk transfer options, we are now working with other advisers to deliver them. Relevant staff will have an option to transfer their past service benefits under the DHL plan to their current pension arrangement.

Monday, 9 September, 2019

featuring

Ashwin Kumar

Professor of Social Policy │ Manchester Metropolitan University

Please see the attached flyer for information and how to book.

The RAF Chinook has already dropped approximately 150 tonnes of aggregate – a mixture of sand, gravel and stone – into Toddbrook and will continue to do so throughout the day. This is intended to stem the flow of water into the reservoir and into other surrounding watercourses designed for this purpose.

Minister for the Armed Forces Mark Lancaster said:

The Armed Forces continues to support local authorities in tackling the flooding we have seen across many parts of the UK.

The rapid response of the RAF in deploying a Chinook helicopter will provide extra support in Derbyshire and we stand ready to assist in any way required.

Wing Commander Gary Lane, the RAF liaison officer at the scene said:

Once the call from the civilian authorities came, we rapidly deployed an RAF Chinook and support crews to provide this vital support. We will continue to use the skills of our highly trained air and groundcrew and the astonishing lift capability of the Chinook to assist in ensuring the safety of the public.

The Chinook’s crew were also accompanied by a joint helicopter support squadron deployed from RAF Benson and an RAF Regional Liaison Support Officer. This military support was requested and provided under the “Military Aid To Civil Authorities” (MACA) process.

The three bodies responsible for regulating qualifications in, respectively, Northern Ireland (CCEA Regulation), England (Ofqual) and Wales (Qualifications Wales) have today (Friday 2 August 2019) launched a joint consultation on proposals to revise their respective Conditions of Recognition – the rules governing the qualifications and organisations each regulate.

The consultation responds to feedback gathered through a number of reviews recently undertaken, including Qualifications Wales’ review of its Standard Conditions of Recognition and Ofqual’s call for evidence on the availability of fee information.

Recognising that many of the awarding organisations (AOs) regulated are common to all three countries, and to minimise any burden on them, CCEA Regulation, Ofqual and Qualifications Wales have worked closely together to propose the same, or closely aligned, revisions to their respective Conditions in the vast majority of cases.

A key change proposed by all three regulators relates to the Conditions governing the qualification fee information awarding organisations must provide to purchasers. The regulators believe it is important that the prices charged for qualifications represent value for money, are transparent to all users, publicly accessible and clear to the purchasers of those qualifications, such as schools or colleges. They propose changes to strengthen their rules in this area.

Other proposals in the consultation include revisions to a range of Conditions, including those governing the role of the Responsible Officer, recognition of prior learning and issuing results.

The majority of the proposed changes are designed to improve the clarity and structure of their rules, make definitions easier to access and bring them up to date, for example in respect of data protection law, without changing the expectations placed on the organisations regulated.

The consultation includes a small number of proposals for revisions to the Conditions of just one or two regulators. These have been kept to a minimum and in most cases occur where policy or legislative contexts mean alignment is not possible or does not apply.

The consultation is open for 12 weeks, until 25 October 2019, and awarding organisations, professional bodies, education leaders, schools and colleges who operate across the three jurisdictions are encouraged to give their views to the consultation direct or at our event.