• The ‘Establishment’- A Typical Fire Service pension Scheme;

• A ‘Legal’ scandal – The crafty ‘Passing of the Buck’ of legal responsibility to the disabled FSVs;DCLG and LFRS dirty  work at the xroads; what is the law?;

The ‘Establishment’ – a ‘Typical’ Fire Service Pension Scheme.

This, using Lancashire as an example, is how a typical pension Scheme was and is ‘managed’ in practice today. It may, or then again it may not be typical, one hopes not.

Lancashire County Fire Brigade(LCFB).

In the 1978 post-national strike halcyon days there was unquestioning trust in the pension Scheme and its manager by those who had either commenced their pensions or were still in the process of accruing benefits for their future retirement. It seemed, due to the universal ignorance of pension matters and because the Scheme members did not know any better that this trust was well placed, but time and events have now starkly demonstrated that this was a serious error of collective judgement.

In Lancashire the hopes and aspirations of those accumulating their pension benefits for a rainy day were held in trust by one solitary appointee who routinely filled, on the ‘buggins’ turn practice, the appointment of payroll and pensions ‘officer’ until one after another the post holder departed for their own civilian retirement. The appointment, although described as the payroll and pensions ‘officer’, was not properly resourced in terms of either training or speciality professional education, and pension ‘management’ was dealt with on a daily ad hoc basis. No post holder was formally qualified, a practice which continues today, the duties simply being a small part of a larger reference in the administration of  this new creation called a ‘Service’.

In Lancashire this pension reference which managed 2000+/- fire pensions was technically supported when the need arose by the pensions department of Lancashire County Council of which the County Fire Brigade was, at that time, an intrinsic part. This pension department, of some magnitude dealing with 200,000 pensioners, dealt with a wide range of different pension Schemes of LCC employees including Police retirees.

In 1992 the Firemen’s Pension Scheme Order Statutory Instrument No:129(S.I.129) enacted under the 1947 Fire Services Act was introduced to Lancashire. Accompanying this Statutory Instrument was one of the most comprehensive Home Office plain English pension practitioner manuals ever written on any Fire Service pension Scheme, either before or since.

Clearly the Home Office, in recognition of the legal complexity of the new Scheme and the perceived inability of existing pension practitioners who were too implement it, went the ‘extra mile’, to ensure the success of the ’92 Scheme’s introduction by producing this vade mecum of a ‘Commentary’.

These two documents were placed in trust in the hands of the then Brigade pension practitioner with the intention that such was the comprehensive guidance provided to her that it was a simple matter, using the Commentary’s plain English directions, to comply with the law and in so doing to discharge its fiduciary duty of care to Scheme Members under its management.

It was exquisitely simple to operate because almost uniquely the ‘Commentary’ exactly mirrored in plain English each line, paragraph, and section of the S.I.129. Thus in daily use if a pension query arose then one simply read the appropriate law and directly cross-referenced it to the mirrored ‘Commentary’ to find the plain English answer. What could be simpler, even for Lancashire?

The plain fact of the matter was that the Home Office in conjunction with Fire Authorities in their collectively arrogant complacency concluded at this point that having produced the ‘tools’ Fire Service in-house pension practitioners could well be left to their own devices to get on with it. This complacency simply sowed the seeds for future debacles in the ‘management’ of pensions in both Lancashire and its neighbouring Fire Authority Merseyside which at one point also had a pension management melt down.

Home Office mandarins and Fire Authorities made the fateful assumptions that these in-house ‘experts’ were fully formally trained for the envisaged pension Scheme management task that lay ahead; that they held essential formal nationally recognised professional qualifications to carry out those tasks including the financial skills of audit; and thus these practitioners were sufficiently skilled, experienced, and  committed to ensuring that their pension Scheme delivered all these qualities robustly to Members of their pension Scheme to whom they had a Statutory duty of care.

All these self-assurances were entirely wrong because in fact these pension practitioners possessed none of the desirable qualifications or qualities outlined above.

No thought was given to ensuring that this much more comprehensive and complex Scheme, with its equally comprehensive and accompanying Commentary, might require more training in management terms which in time would naturally lead to more Scheme conversion training by means of seminars and hands on practice.

This strategic error was compounded by the fact that no special studies, evaluations, or follow-up monitoring studies were ever carried out by the Home Office or Fire Authorities to test these assumptions and self-assurances concerning the professional capability of those who had to administer this new Scheme when the actual reality was that the vast majority of these clerks were simply  just that, clerks.

Thus in the great tradition of British bureaucracy  as far as the Home Office Mandarins and the Fire Authorities were concerned it was simply business as usual which seemed to consist of muddling along on the ‘monkey see, monkey do, monkey gets it wrong’ principle, and they did…

But the fact remains that these practitioners were neither trained, qualified, or experienced as pension Scheme managers by any stretch of the imagination and that is the scandalous situation which remains so today in the 21^st Century.

So one is bound to ask the obvious question what is different today 36 years on? Nothing.

The ‘Commentary’ and the S.I.129 are reproduced in full for downloading from one of the Bugler’s on-line Libraries.

Go Here.

Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service.

For an initial period after the devolution and formation of the LFRS in 1998, fire pension management was still carried on by the LCC Pensions Services on a ‘grace and favour ‘ basis until a formal annual commercial contract for pension management services was drawn up between the LFRS and LCC. This agreement is known as a Service Level Agreement. Go Here. (Hover pointer over “Key Icon” in PDF to display Bugler’s Comments).

It is inevitable given the lack of professional pension qualifications; any form of pension audit expertise; and the self-evident lack of any pension management capabilities that these clerks, masquerading as pension ‘experts’, would sooner, rather than later, generate serious payment errors which would be challenged by FSVs.

The subsequent acrimonious exchanges would of course rapidly descend into the blame game and the knee jerk reaction by the pension ‘establishment’ is always to cover up these errors by blaming the FSV and failing to identify the person in pensions who was actually responsible in law for these errors and failures?

The simple question in law is who is actually responsible for pension payment errors and where does the liability lie?

Although it is uncertain who actually started the movement  to shift  the ‘blame’ and responsibility for pension Scheme management errors from the ‘establishment’ onto the shoulders of the disabled FSV it is highly likely given the consistency of this blame culture that it cannot have come from other than a centrally driven governmental source.

The greatest suspect in these sotto voce mandarin whispers activities can as usual be none other than civil servants at the Home Office Fire Department and currently their ilk at the DCLG Firefighters Pension Team.

Shortly the Reader will see the dirty fingers of the DCLG all over documents in which they make ‘suggestions’ how a Fire Authority could ‘muscle’ non complaint dissenting disabled FSVs in the pension debacle in Lancashire.

Such dirty work has long been suspected but this was a blatant written example of interference by out of control civil servants working in unlawful complicity with a so called pension ‘expert’ (with no qualifications) who was no other than a thug called Hamilton who was required to leave the Greater Manchester Probation Trust as Head of Human Resources under a mutual non-disclosure agreement (Legal  speak for- if you do not leave you will be sacked) for unbridled bullying and sexual harassment of female members of his staff one of whom is no longer in the Trust’s employment but who can speak out uninhibited by any non-disclosure. Go Here.

Here are the scheming duplicitous corrupters at work…

“Email from Anthony Mooney 20^th September 2007 11:24 To Brendan Hamilton(LFRS)

 With regards to the audit of the 169 cases of medical retirements, Part 10, Rule 2, paragraph 1 of the Firefighters’ Compensation Scheme, previously Rule L3(1) of the Firefighters’ Pension Scheme, provides a FRA with the authority to delay the payment of all or part of an injury pension to any extent that they may need in order to determine the amount of the award. It is our view that if a pensioner refuses to provide the FRA with the appropriate consent in order that they can obtain the relevant information regarding the DWP benefits that they are receiving then the FRA would be justified in suspending payment of all or part of their injury pension until the matter of liability was resolved.

Alternatively, if a pensioner who has been medically retired refuses to provide the appropriate consent, it is our view that the FRA would be justified in writing to the individual to advise them that in the absence of any documented evidence the FRA have assumed that they are in receipt of certain DWP benefits and will therefore be deducting them from their injury pension. This could act as a motivation for the pensioner to give their consent for the FRA to access information from DWP in regards to the benefits they are receiving

I hope this clarifies the situation.

Kind Regards, Anthony.”

The Bugler asks where in any legislation associated with Fire Service pensions is this ‘appropriate consent’ written? Furthermore the Reader should note the following…

Mooney is currently the Deputy Team Leader of the Firefighters Pension Team at the DCLG who with his Team Leader Mr. Cornelius in recent correspondence with the Bugler’s pro bono Barrister claimed he knew nothing about pensions and further, if he did, then he had no control whatsoever over Fire Authorities under his jurisdiction.Yet this is precisely what he does in this email. Res ipsa loquitur- Let the facts speak for the facts. Go Here.

It is clear Mooney was sufficiently involved and in a position of authority to advise Hamilton to apply the ‘mailed fist’ of pension suspension, whether or not, the disabled FSV was guilty of an unsubstantiated allegation.

Clearly ‘guilty until proven innocent’ is the rule of DCLG civil servants regardless of what the Supreme Court might practice.

Furthermore, Mooney in his oppressive creativity then goes on to advise Hamilton how he should ‘muscle’ disabled Fire Service Veterans.

Describing it as ‘motivation’ under the duress of the deduction of DWP benefits he encourages Lancashire’s Hamilton to assume that the disabled FSV is receiving DWP benefits, even though the FSV may not be receiving a single penny, and may simply be taking a principled stand against such bullying oppression by Hamilton, Warren, Holland,Winterbottom et al at the LFRS .

See Hamilton’s interpretation of ‘pastoral care’. Go Here.

All these appalling suggestions and subterfuges cannot be described as other than arbitrary and oppressive abuses of power and breaches of human rights by civil servants no less whose primary function is to implement the will of the People via Parliament and for whom we as Taxpayers not only pay but require them to behave themselves within a Code of Conduct we have set for them.

It must never be forgotten that this ‘motivation’ which Mooney speaks of so sinisterly and which we know Hamilton/Warren/Holland/Winterbottom subsequently implemented, describing it as the infamous ‘hardship route’, involved removing the very life blood of income from disabled FSVs and their families who were terminally ill and who needed every single penny to support their terminal care…this occurred on no less than two publicly documented occasions to two FSVs and families.

Go Here.

One might assume that the DCLG and its civil servants in conjunction with these LFRS thugs cannot get more lawless, amoral, and iniquitously corrupt behind closed doors than this, but dear Reader, as document after document is revealed  and published by the Bugler, you will be wrong.

Because Cornelius, Mooney, and the remainder of this ‘team’ have not a single pension qualification between them, a fact confirmed by them in response to a Freedom of Information request. They in keeping with Lancashire simply do not know,  or care, of the implication or the impact, with the advent of the Data Protection Act 1998, and the direct affects it had on pension management when establishing liability to pay the correct pension in respect of DWP benefits being paid to an FSV, or not.

These kindly civil servants are tasked with the direct responsibility from government for the managing of 46 Fire Service Pension Schemes throughout the UK.

Let us not forget we, the taxpayers, are these iniquitous creatures employers and we set a Code of Conduct for them to comply with. A Code which in effect demands the highest standards of personal and professional decency and probity…but what care they when they see, as now, corruption and criminality stalking the very corridors of number 10 Downing Street?

So all this begs the simple question who is responsible for the liability under Fire Service Schemes to pay the correct pension(s)?

The answer is exquisitely simple, in spite of the asinine braying of these so called ‘experts’, the answer is the DCLG and the Fire Authorities; no ifs, buts, or maybes, by these duplicitous agencies of government.

What Statutory duty has the FSV to inform the Fire Authority of anything? None.

What ‘undertaking’, ‘promise’, ‘voluntary responsibility’, or ‘obligation’ has an FSV to a Fire Authority to assist them in the running of their Statutory Pension Scheme? None.

The time is long past to destroy this ‘monkey see-monkey do’, ‘expert’ generated mythology and blame game which has been peddled  for so long  these peddlers actually believe it themselves and use it regularly  to prop and cover up their own laziness, professionally ignorant errors and incompetence, encapsulated in a final statement of their complete corruption… “I will because I can”.

The law which these ‘experts’ are scandalously committed to completely ignoring, if they understood it in the first place, tells us the following in a direct extract from the Editor’s counterclaim against the LFRS which Judge Butler neatly,  in a  abuse of judicial process, buried in the long grass because it was too complicated for him to deal with he told the Court, thus disenfranchising the Bugler of his right to a fair hearing under the European Convention.

The Supreme Court, as their records show, do not like inadequate Judges using the judicial ‘system’ to bury complex issues in the long grass, because as they well know and Butler shall see, they have a bad habit, like landmines, of exploding in their careers with its resultant terminal promotion prospects…but more of all this later in its own expose.

The following sub-chapter is an extract from the Editor’s Court Statement of Truth and Fact submitted as part of his Counterclaim against the LFRS which was never heard in Court because of the slick Willie circumstances outlined above.

For Claimant read LFRS; for LPS read LCC Pensions Services; for Defendant read the Editor.

“ 6.00.     The Dispute and the Scheme ‘Rules’.

6.01.     It is the statutory duty of the Claimant under Rule L3(1) to determine their liability to pay the Defendant’s pensions. In so doing the Claimant is not permitted in law to create its own arbitrary ‘Rules’ to administer the Scheme.

a) In 1996 the Claimant did knowingly and unlawfully delegate in part this liability to the Defendant at the commencement of his pensions in an abuse of trust and in an act of bad faith by effectively creating an unlawful ‘Rule’ under the Scheme which required the Defendant to sign an ‘undertaking’^(D005) on 24^th October 1996 whilst under the direct duress of the ‘delay’ of liability;

b) The Claimant made the signing of an ‘undertaking’ a precondition to the Defendant’s discharge and a precondition to the receipt of the first payment of his pensions.

c) The Claimant’s ‘undertaking’, fails the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (c.50) SCHEDULE 2 “Guidelines” for Application of Reasonableness Test which by requiring a signature under circumstances of duress fetters this ‘undertaking’ in law making it  unenforceable.

d) The Claimant was ‘advantaged’ in their ‘bargaining’ position by the implicit threat that if the Defendant declined to sign such an ‘undertaking’ they would delay payment  of the his pensions;

 e) The Defendant received an ‘inducement’ under duress which was that if he did sign this ‘undertaking’ then he would receive his pensions.

 f) The Claimant has by this ultra vires act, whilst determining their liability, created an unlawful ‘Rule’ outside the  Scheme Rules.

6.02.     The Defendant does not have a statutory; common law; lawful contractual duty; or moral  obligation in ‘goodwill’ to comply with this ‘undertaking’, a common ground fact confirmed in the Claimant’s  second hearsay statement of truth.

Nevertheless, the Defendant did voluntarily in ignorance; in good faith; and in an abuse of trust by the Claimant comply with this ‘undertaking’ by informing the Claimant when the he received a DWP Reduced Earnings Income Allowance(REA)1999 and on numerous other occasions when this question arose.

6.03.     The Claimant was confidentially informed on 7^th July 1999 by the DWP that the Defendant had made application for REA. This was by means of the DWP issuing to the Claimant its standard (first) REA anti-fraud check to which the Claimant responded.

            On the 19^th July 1999 the Claimant contacted the Defendant and asked the Defendant if he was successful with his application to let them know.

            On the 2^nd August 1999 the Defendant was informed by the DWP that his application had been successful and was retrospective to the 31^st March 1999 ^(D015;D016).

              On or about the 2^nd August 1999, the Defendant orally informed the Claimant that he had received notification from the DWP that he been successful in his application for REA. He retained a contemporaneous note to this effect.

6.04.     The Claimant had a statutory duty under Rule 4B,3,(2),(a), which they failed, to declare apportionment to the Defendant.

            This Rule requires that the Claimant must declare to the Defendant ‘so much of any’ of the  Defendant’s REA which they ‘may’ consider is being paid for and directly attributable to the Defendant’s qualifying injury, and invite the Defendant’s response.       

6.05.     Neither the Claimant’s PRF records of the Defendant nor the Defendant’s own records show any record existing of any declared apportionment from the Claimant to him.

In addition no relevant correspondence on this subject of apportionment exists on the Defendant’s PRF file between the Defendant; the Claimant; and the LPS who would have been required to act on the instructions of the Claimant should this have been decided.

6.06.     In the absence of such records, confirmed in common ground by the Claimant’s second hearsay statement of truth, the Defendant is entitled to draw the inference that the Claimant concluded that none of the REA allowance was deductible from his IA because in fact none was deducted and because no instruction for deduction was ever issued to the LPS to carry out such a deduction.

6.07.   Consequently the Claimant by failing to react to receipt of this information from both the DWP and  the Defendant, that the Defendant was about to receive his initial REA, the Claimant created a situation whereby they failed to communicate any decisions to the Defendant or the LPS and failed to record and file any decisions in the Defendant’s PRF a fact which the Claimant also in common ground  confirms in their hearsay statement.

6.08.     In time this maladministration led to the unlawful withdrawal of the Defendant’s entire IA on 1^st July  2008.

6.09.     On the 13^th November 2007^(D012), the Claimant once more attempted to create a second unlawful  ‘Rule’ outside the Scheme by making the signing of a ‘consent’ form to access all (not just the  relevant records) of the Defendant’s DWP records an additional precondition to the receipt of his IA and  thus they continued to act in ultra vires:

a) No statutory powers exist within the Scheme which empowers the Claimant to create or implement any such arbitrary  ‘Rules’, mechanisms, or preconditions;

b) The Defendant had no statutory duty as a Scheme member to sign a ‘consent’ form or any other document as a precondition to the receipt of his pensions;

c) No lawful ‘arrangement’, based on a members’ consensus approved amendment to the Scheme was jointly constructed by the Claimant within the Scheme which required the Defendant’s ‘consent’ as a precondition to the receipt of his pensions;

d) The Claimant confirms in common ground in his hearsay 2^nd witness statement ^(C-D24) that the Defendant’s applicable Scheme of 1992 does not expressly place an obligation on any member of the Scheme, including the Defendant, to sign any authorisation to allow access to his DWP personal data; neither is there any authority within the Regulations to offset an alleged overpayment unless there is a proven charge of negligence, dishonesty, or deceit;

e) The Claimant now concedes that whilst there is no statutory duty placed on the Defendant and others in the Scheme there is in these circumstances a goodwill moral imperative placed on the Defendant and others to assist the Claimant in the management of the Scheme for which they hold the Statutory duty but for which the Defendant and others have no responsibility;A Scheme for which the Claimant is paid public monies to administer; and for which the Defendant and others will receive no inducement or incentive on their part;

f) Furthermore, the Claimant contends against the established facts and the reality of what actually occurred  that they attempted to use this non incentivised hypothetical ‘goodwill’ to encourage the Defendant and others to help the Claimant out of their self-created maladministration on this rare occasion by the use of a one off goodwill gesture of ‘consent’ whilst completely ignoring the counterproductive atmosphere which the Claimant had themselves already generated^(C-35) by their intimidating and bullying bad manners and in their maltreatment of the disabled FSVs, including the Defendant, from whom they were now asking for assistance.“

This is the actual law and this is how a scandalously corrupt Fire Authority in unlawful complicity with the DCLG shifts the burden of legal responsibility and the blame game from their Statutory shoulders onto the shoulders of disabled Fire Service Veterans throughout the UK who have no responsibility whatsoever in the matter.