THOUSANDS of people have signed a petition calling on Home Secretary Theresa May to allow widows of police officers who die in service to keep their spouse\u2019s pension if they remarry or cohabit.<\/p>\n
The campaign \u2013 which has the support of Care of Police Survivors \u2013 follows on from a decision in Northern Ireland to reinstate pensions for widows and widowers whose spouses died in service from 1 January 1989.<\/p>\n
Under the RUC Pension Regulations 1988 these survivors will now have their widows pension reinstated from 1 July 2014.<\/p>\n
Now in Scotland, England and Wales, a petition has been started by police widow Cathryn Hall \u2013 whose West Midlands Police officer husband Colin died from a heart attack at the scene of an incident in 1987. She is calling for a similar decision to be made by the UK Government.<\/p>\n
In 2001 she \u201cwas faced with a very difficult decision: to keep my police widows\u2019 pension, or move in with my partner; although I could ill afford to lose the money living apart was becoming intolerable. Our financial lives have been a roller coaster ride since then but we have been happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
She states widows should not be made to make a choice between \u201clove or money\u201d.<\/p>\n
In 2008, a Government scheme launched which effectively \u201cbought out\u201d police widows of their pensions for \u00a320,000 if they remarried. Although this did not apply retrospectively. It is estimated that 131 spouses had their pensions axed between 2008 and 2012 because they remarried or moved in with a partner.<\/p>\n
Christine Fulton, whose Strathclyde Police husband PC Lewis Fulton, was stabbed to death while answering an emergency call in Glasgow in 1994, is also backing the new campaign.<\/p>\n
Christine, who co-founded the COPS charity, describes the police pension she receives as \u201chis last gift to me and to part with it is to part with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cLewis paid into his pension for our future, just because he didn\u2019t have a future does not mean that I don\u2019t. This is It isn\u2019t just about the financial aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christine, who has been in a relationship for eight years, added: \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to move in together because I would lose my pension. This is an injustice that has to be corrected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the 1987 police pension, it is currently estimated that there are 22,000 serving police officers in Britain whose pensions would be cancelled if they died on duty and their partners later remarried.<\/p>\n
The new 2006 police pension meant that serving officers and new recruits could sign up to \u201cpensions for life\u201d for their loved ones left behind.<\/p>\n
Christine, who was awarded an MBE for her work with COPS, has been campaigning for the change for years. She added: \u201cI\u2019m a lot more hopeful for change now than I was years ago. The government\u2019s argument has been blown out of the water because they\u2019ve done it in Northern Ireland. If they can do it in Northern Ireland they can do it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Home Office spokeswoman said the government was committed to ensuring public service pensions were \u201caffordable, sustainable and fair, both for the members of those schemes and other taxpayers\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cOfficers who join the 2006 police pension scheme do benefit from life-long pensions for widows and widowers. All serving officers were offered the opportunity to transfer to this scheme when it was introduced.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn common with most other public service pension schemes of the time, the 1987 pension was not designed or funded to provide such benefits. Attempting to backdate this or any pension of this type, would have serious implications across the whole public sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can see the petition\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THOUSANDS of people have signed a petition calling on Home Secretary Theresa May to allow widows of police officers who die in service to keep their spouse\u2019s pension if they\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}