The sound of judicial bleating about what lesser mortals will surely view as a modest and sensible recalibration of judges’ pensions is hard to bear. It seems their lordships might even take new justice secretary Chris Grayling to court to block reforms that reflect the straitjacket imposed on public spending in the wake of the 2008 crash.

To recap, only the governor of the Bank of England presently enjoys a pension edged with a richer carat of gilt than occupants of the bench. MPs do alright too, but you know that. Of course they do, just as turkeys who decline to cast a ballot on the commencement of the festive season do alright.

Judges have hitherto paid less than 2% of their salaries (in all but a few cases) to accrue a final salary pension at the rate of 1/40th for each year of service, up to 20 years. This is quite staggeringly generous. Let’s say you’re a judge earning £170,000 a year - halfway up the ladder. For a modest outlay of about £34,000 before tax at current prices, you can retire after 10 years’ service on an annual pension of £85,000 for life.

If you live for another 20 years, that’s a cool £1.7m from the taxpayer. The equivalent of a lottery win at taxpayers’ expense for some of the richest people in the country.

Even better, this is a final salary scheme. Move up and you stand to get far more. The government’s planned reforms can hardly be said to derail the gravy train. For a start, if you’re a judge less than 10 years from the current Judicial Pension Scheme retirement age (in most cases 65), you will stay in the current scheme till you retire - though personal contributions will rise by a hardly ruinous 3.2% points of pay.

The taxpayer, in sharp contrast, already shells out nearly a third of judges’ gross pay each year to meet the vast bulk of the cost of providing these benefits as life expectancy increases.

From April 2015 - and this is their lordships’ real beef - a new scheme is to be introduced which will be a little more affordable for the exchequer. But it will still place judges firmly in the first rank of pension scheme participants in either the public or private sectors.

Member contributions would range from 7.35% to 9% and the accrual rate would weaken from 1:40 to a still market-leading 1:43. But what is critical is that the benefits retired judges will get remain ‘defined’. That is to say, all the ‘risk’ lies with the taxpayer and the pensions must and will be paid at the levels promised, regardless of investment returns.

True, the new scheme will be based on career average earnings not final salary, but why not? The salaries at the top are hardly negligible and anyone who has reached the pinnacle of this profession is already counted among the wealthiest in our nation.

Almost no one entering private sector employment these days can expect such largesse, given the wholesale demise of final salary schemes. At best their employers will throw in a few percentage points of pay into a so-called ‘defined contribution scheme’ – but what the pensioner actually ends up getting on retirement is at the mercy of stockmarkets. And we know how good pension fund managers are at creaming off fat fees while producing poor or even negative returns for defined contributions scheme members.

It’s only the tax relief that makes it worth joining such schemes, in many cases; too often you’d be better off stashing the cash under the mattress.

Of course, what I have ignored so far is the supply and demand issue. The Senior Salaries Review Body has pointed out that it is ‘important to assess the value of the judicial pension as a substantial part of the reward package’. Quite so, because judges’ salaries – while hefty – don’t come close to what the best of private practice has to offer.

Will we end up with duff lawyers in post because the masters of the universe won’t leave the bar for the bench? Possibly - though I’m not wholly convinced - and society will be the poorer. But perhaps our society is already poorer, if the worship of money and the devaluation of public service means that our brightest lawyers - who have already made their pile - cannot be prevailed upon to put something back into a justice system that has met their material needs so well.

It is, alas, a sign of the times – paid-up members of the 1% demanding extraordinary incentives to turn up for work while just about everybody else is seeing the real value of their salary and benefits tank.

‘We’re a special case,’ the judges cry. Well, perhaps. But their protests are unedifying nevertheless.

Paul Rogerson is Gazette editor-in-chief

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