Sunday, May 06, 2012

Those gold-plated public sector pensions that are ruining us

The Office of National Statistics (htp: The Spectator's "Barometer" column) has calculated that pension obligations in the UK amount to £7.1 trillion, or nearly 5 times GDP.

Unfunded public sector pensions - the so-called "gold-plated" ones - account for a mere 11.90% of the total.



2 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

I don't understand this.

"State Pensions" are presumably those paid out of current taxation, so should be included in the "unfunded" column?

Or if not, what are they?

Sackerson said...

No. "Public sector - unfunded" is occupational pensions. Also, in the case of teachers, the appellation is not exactly correct: their pension benefits require personal contributions from salary, plus giveup of SERPS/S2P entitlements; and in some cases (e.g. early retirement), entitlements are partly paid for by the Local Authority, so come from rates rather than national taxation.