GMB launches judicial review over Treasury appropriation of £2.4 billion pension cash

Utterly shameless of Government to plunder pension pots of hard-working public sector workers

GMB Union has launched a judicial review against the Treasury over £2.4 billion that they have taken from public sector pension pots. 

Since 2015, more than four million people working in the NHS, the civil service and local government have effectively been overcharged for their pensions. 

Unions - including GMB - negotiated a deal which would see the estimated £2.4 billion paid back to the workers by reducing their future pension contributions and/or improving benefits.  

The Government has since passed legislation allowing them to instead use the surplus cash to pay the costs of an age discrimination they lost - thanks to its botched plan to raise the retirement age for public sector workers, known as the McCloud judgment.  

GMB is now launching a legal review to stop Ministers using the money for its own legal mess and return it to the public sector workers it belongs to.

George Georgiou, GMB National Pensions Organiser, said: 

“We have no course of action other than to challenge the Government’s intention via judicial review.  

“It is utterly shameless of them to plunder the pension pots of hard-working public sector workers to pay the costs of a case they clearly lost by not carrying out their responsibilities lawfully.  

“GMB members were told to pay in more than required, we were told that we would get pay rises and live longer - the opposite has occurred just as the Government’s response is the opposite of what we deserve.”