Public policy — Statutory entitlement — Police pension — Wife convicted of police officer’s manslaughter claiming widow’s pension under statutory scheme — Whether common law rule on forfeiture extending to scheme — Police Pensions Act 1976, s 1(3)(4) — Police Pensions Regulations 1987 (SI 1987/257, reg K5(1)-(4)

Glover v Staffordshire Police Authority

QBD (McCombe J): 5 October 2006

The common law rule of forfeiture, as now enunciated in s 1 of the Forfeiture Act 1982, precluded the widow of a retired police officer, who had been convicted of his manslaughter, from receiving a widow’s pension under the Police Pensions Regulations 1987.

McCombe J, sitting in the Administrative Court of the Queen’s Bench Division at Manchester, so held when dismissing an appeal by case stated by Mrs Carol Glover from the decision of the Crown Court at Stoke-on-Trent dismissing her appeal against the decision of the Staffordshire Police Authority to refuse her benefits under the regulations.

McCOMBE J said that it had been argued that the forfeiture provisions under the Police Pensions Act 1976 and the 1987 regulations had the effect of modifying the forfeiture rule at common law so as to allow for forfeiture of police pensions only in such cases as were expressly provided for in them. The regulations conferred upon police authorities a discretion to deprive a beneficiary of benefit in certain instances of bad behaviour, which did not cover the instant case.

However, the statutory scheme had been enacted to operate alongside the common law rule, which precluded a person who had unlawfully killed another from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing. The common law rule was automatic and not dependent upon the exercise of any discretion and Parliament cannot have been taken to have swept it aside, as a wholly exceptional case, in the area of police pensions.

Appearances: Richard Kimblin (Lichfield Reynolds, Stoke-on-Trent) for Mrs Glover. Elisabeth Laing (Solicitor, Staffordshire County Council) for the police authority.

Reported by: C T Beresford, barrister