A retired major has won a landmark case against the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that could mean thousands of reservists will receive army pensions for the first time.
Major Charles Milroy took the MoD to the employment tribunal in Glasgow, claiming that he should have been enrolled on a military pension scheme for his service between 1982 and 2015. He served more than 37 years in the Territorial Army (TA), including a tour in Iraq.
In 2015, the MoD revised its Armed Forces Pension Scheme (AFPS 75) to allow TA soldiers a full pension, which previously they had been denied.
He was told when he tried to enrol for a pension that it would be “administratively burdensome and extremely expensive” to provide all reservists with pensions.
The MoD claimed that reservists did not typically serve for long enough to justify a pension, or work enough days of the year. Milroy argued that his length of service and work days were worthy of a pension.
Prior to 1 April 2015, reservists would only qualify for a pension during periods of mobilisation. When Milroy was mobilised to Iraq in 2007, he asked for contributions to be paid into his employer pension scheme at Scottish Water.
After he retired from Scottish Water in 2019, he increased his service for the TA from around 46 days per year to 150. Employment Judge Frances Eccles said the MoD should have recognised that he worked more than usual for a reservist.
Milroy also raised a claim under the Part Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000.
The tribunal found that the MoD had established the value of his scheme using a divisor of 365.25 to calculate his daily rate, which meant he was treated less favourably in comparison to a full-time worker.
His lawyer argued that for this to be a valid comparison, regular soldiers would have to be working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The MoD argued that because regulars are “on call to work” every day, the comparison was fair, but the tribunal disagreed.
Judge Eccles said that not using a smaller divisor to calculate Milroy’s pension amounted to him being treated less favourably.
The judgment concluded: “Including reservists in the scheme would inevitably increase the administrative burden and cost to the MoD. [The MoD] cannot be criticised for seeking to avoid unnecessary costs and administrative burdens on the public purse. It is a legitimate aim.
“The tribunal was not persuaded however that the administrative burden and costs of allowing reservists to join the AFPS 75 scheme was sufficiently high to justify their exclusion.”
Milroy described his claim as a “test case” that could have a knock-on effect on thousands of other reservists’ entitlement to pensions.
Prior to the tribunal, he posted on social media: “If I am successful, other TA soldiers will be able to make similar claims, and for some of them this may be life-changing.”
