To think public sector DB pensions should be illegal

@Catsandcheesenothing will change for current pensioners as they are untouchable. It will be for future ones.

Work for 30 years, retire at 60, draw half pay for another 30 years. What's not to like.

Public sector workers are taxpayers too.

Well not sure that will work. Look at the trouble trying to remove the winter fuel allowance, also no Tory/right wing party will ever want to disenfranchise their main support by making them worse off. I guess it’s a possibility with a labour government but despite what they could achieve if they were left to get on with the job they’re unlikely to make it past the next election thanks to the fail and the express and reform/restore

Came to say this and you got there first 😅

Government enters into long term contracts all the time though. HS2 for one. Capita for administering civil service pensions, for another.

Some public sectors pensions like LGPS
oS are fully funded from both employees and employer contributions. It is civil service and NHS that are unfunded in the sense the government underwrites the the scheme . It is about time that was changed but no one wants to tackle it but stumping up the funds in advance.

They will likely be means tested, not enough people to support them.

My DH was a public sector worker, not highly paid. At one time if he had been paid £1 less it would have triggered £10 in social payments (we had 2 children at the time)! His pension is DB and I consider it deferred wages. Not all public sector workers are highly paid and nowadays not even secure.

The LGPS is a funded scheme op.
I agree it is a shame that the same doesn't apply to other public sector pensions schemes.

But I don't see it as a bad scheme. More employers should trade salaries now for more generous pension contributions. Ensuring people can live well as they get older strikes me as eminently sensible

Ultimately, that doesn't solve the problem of costs now.

It might solve the problem of costs in the future, 25 years down the line, but it doesn't solve them now.

That's because now all of the historically accrued pensions would still have to be paid out and that would apply probably for the next 50 or so years. However, obviously a good chunk of those would be smaller say in 25 ish years and certainly you would see a reduction over time.

However, the other thing you'd have to pay now would be the additional salary contributions of all of those staff that are now not getting a pension where you've deferred the cost later. So that means that you would have to pay both the current salaries and and the current pension costs of people who are already retired or will be retiring. Whereas currently you defer a portion of the current salaries to the future pension costs and just pay the current pension costs.

So whether or not it's a good idea, it would require the allocation of an enormous amount of upfront cash, which means we're very unlikely to see it happen. Because governments don't have much incentive to do something that makes their life way harder for the next 25 years.

Some people think they'll never grow old and never need to rely on a pension.
Plus - soft target.

i imagine that will have to be means tested in the future.

Ah.
I hadn't realised teachers sat outside the LGPS

Civil servants with DB pensions pay employee pension contributions (at quite a high rate) that then go to the Treasury to fund current spending so similar model to state pensions - do you want to get rid of that too - as that is basically an unfunded DB pension.

You could say the same about the state pension.

Are you particularly jealous of someone you know who is receiving a DB pension?

I moved back to the public sector specifically for the pension & the annual leave & the sick pay. It makes sense as I get older.

I think you are forgetting that PS workers are also taxpayers too. And the vast majority of them are on comparatively low wages. I always like to point out on these threads that many Executive Officers in the civil service are also needing to claim UC.

No, it’s that a pension of 12k on a crap salary is a huge “pot” for someone to try to create themselves.

All this dialogue recently about pensions is so shortsighted. If you want to have a shit ton of public sector workers all poor when they're retired to make everyone feel better and 'make it fair' with private sector workers who are all being shafted by big business and greedy billionaires (race to the bottom anyone)? You will just create a problem down the road when they all have to claim pension credit and housing credit to survive.

Also you end up with a large population of older people with no spare income so they can't contribute anything to the economy by spending and likely their health outcomes will be worse (being poor tends to do that to you) and so more is spent on the NHS and other services to help them.

We have to look after our old people one way or another. Nobody is on final salary schemes anymore, so everyone needs to calm down and support legislation that helps private sector workers build better retirements so theyre not scrabbling around in old age either.

@parkintroubleno they are in the TPS

I think teaching support staff are part of LGPS.

What amazes me is none of you actually understand that crap wages for many years doesn’t mean a big pension. I worked 42 years in the nhs, leaving on a salary of 60k.
Like many colleagues I worked part time for several years to raise a family. (No free childcare, very few nurseries)
My pension is £12k.