Pensions - Articles - 'Scary meaningless' public sector pensions numbers


 Reacting to new Treasury estimates for the costs of future public sector pensions liabilities published today (Wednesday), TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

 'These figures are a nakedly political attempt by the government to strengthen its hand in the negotiations on public sector pensions, after its continued failure to sustain the argument that they are unaffordable.

 'These numbers may well be scarily big, but they are close to meaningless. Both the National Audit Office (NAO) and John Hutton's review say that this is not an appropriate measure of the affordability of public sector pensions. Small variations in assumptions can produce huge differences in this figure, even though the payments remain the same.

 'Projecting the government's future liabilities on any area of spending and presenting them as a bill that has to be paid all at once will always produce numbers too big for most people to grasp.

 'The truth is that even before the government slashed the value of pensions by linking them to the lower Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation measure, public sector pensions were the one part of age-related expenditure not set to increase in the years ahead.

 'NAO figures and the Hutton report show the cost of public sector pensions as a share of GDP falling in years ahead.

 'This is an ideological government that wants to reduce the size of the state and cut public services to fund tax cuts for its rich friends. It is not surprising therefore that the government will use any opportunity to scare people about the public finances - but scare tactics do not make for sensible politics.

 'No wonder the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned of the limitations of this approach to accounting in their report today.'

Back to Index


Similar News to this Story

Launch of the new Pensions Commission
Standard Life, Aegon, Aviva, Legal and General and PMI comment on the launch of the new Pensions Commission
Retirement confidence dips for 50 somethings
New research from Aegon reveals that only 33% of Britons aged 50–59 feel confident about retiring comfortably, the lowest of any age group. This midli
Pension Commission must deliver bold reforms
Comments from Kirsty Anderson, retirement specialist at Quilter on the DWP’s plan to revive the Pension Commission, including auto-enrolment reform an

Site Search

Exact   Any  

Latest Actuarial Jobs

Actuarial Login

Email
Password
 Jobseeker    Client
Reminder Logon

APA Sponsors

Actuarial Jobs & News Feeds

Jobs RSS News RSS

WikiActuary

Be the first to contribute to our definitive actuarial reference forum. Built by actuaries for actuaries.