A ROYAL COURT ruling could keep surplus-to-requirements public servants in their jobs. Civil servant Andrew Bichard’s victory over pension rights could cost the States dear, according to Public Sector Remuneration Committee chairman Jonathan Le Tocq.

However, he does not plan to appeal.

Richard Southwell, QC, ruled that the PSRC had been wrong to deny Mr Bichard an enhanced discretionary pension payment when he lost

his job after more than 30 years.

Deputy Le Tocq said that could affect future redundancies.

With more public-sector job cuts likely in the future, departments would have the dilemma of paying heavily for making someone redundant or letting someone keep a job that was no longer viable.

Deputy Le Tocq said he honestly believed that the PSRC was right to contest Mr Bichard’s claim, despite heavy criticism from Mr Southwell for wasting taxpayers’ money with a weak case.

‘We had to fight our case because public finances were at stake and in much greater amounts than what the case cost,’ he said.

Instead of appealing, the PSRC will contact the staff side of the Pensions Consultative Committee and open talks on the future for discretionary enhancements. The PCC represents 4,500 public-sector workers.

Staff-side secretary to the PCC and T&G regional industrial organiser Ron Le Cras said yesterday that no approach had been made yet and he was not prepared to comment further.

Guernsey Association of Civil Servants spokesman Harry Orton said that when one side of a properly constituted body ‘the PCC’ wanted to talk, it would do so.

The GACS represents nearly 1,200 of the island’s 1,800 civil servants.

He said it was not the PSRC talking to the GACS, but PSRC members who made up the employer side of the PCC who wanted to discuss changes to the pension scheme with the staff side.

‘If the PSRC had done what it is starting to do now six months ago, it could have spared the States the expense of the court case,’ he said.

DEPUTY Jonathan Le Tocq has denied that he told an untruth in an affidavit to the Royal Court.

In the States yesterday, Deputy Le Tocq outlined the events that led to an accusation by Lt-Bailiff Richard Southwell that a sworn statement about the Restructuring and Reorganisation fund was not true.

‘I think it would be true to say that the statement referred to was incomplete but correct in the relevant context,’ he said.

He said the affidavit he signed on behalf of the PSRC had confirmed that the fund, approved by the States at the last Budget, had not been approved for easing redundancies as a result of machinery of government changes, as in Mr Bichard’s case.

When it had come to making the redundancy effective some weeks later Treasury and Resources had reluctantly agreed that a statutory payment could be paid, from the R and R fund in this instance, as the employing department was unable to afford it.

The statutory payment was not the issue in the Bichard case but the discretionary one, which was the PSRC’s domain, was.

A written statement explaining this change had been handed to the court prior to the hearing.

But this had not satisfied Mr Southwell, who had wanted it in the form of a sworn affidavit.

He said Deputy Le Tocq had failed to correct his affidavit or make appropriate apologies subsequently.

‘It seems that Lt-Bailiff Southwell expected this statement presented at the hearing to be in the form of a formal sworn affidavit, which we have now supplied and could have supplied earlier, but to our knowledge he never mentioned this until his ruling two weeks ago.’

He said deputies unhappy with the outcome should speak to him. ‘I do not regret any action we have taken in this instance, which has in any case the full support of the Policy Council and Treasury and Resources, but if any member of this House feels that my committee or I have acted dishonourably in any respect I should be grateful if they made it known to me.’