To worry about how the heck my public sector pension is going to pay out when I'm old given that the UK almost certainly won't exist by then

Maybe you might have to move to England to get your pension, maybe we will have a big influx of people in the NHS doing this near retirement.

You should not be relying on the UK state pension alone. It pays peanuts and it’s certainly not enough to live off. I suggest you start putting as much as you can into private pension and Isa’s . Ensure all your debt is paid off. Then you’ve got a fighting chance.

Tin foil aisle 2

But how will that go down? When all benefits have been cut 50% due to financial chaos, and public sector workers are taking the government to court to get £30k a year in retirement, theyre going to look even more grabby than the WASPI women!

yes I meant public sector pensions. They would have to take on the liabilities to pay out pensions to their own government employees because it was part of their contracts of employment.

England bank rolls nothing.

Do you mean public sector pension? Scotland isn’t contractually obliged to pay their citizens a penny in state pension, because it’s a benefit.

Well they frankly won't have a choice. They will be contractually obliged to pay it and will have to take on the liabilities. If Scotland can't afford to honour their commitments re the State pension then they won't be able to join the EU because it is unlikely they will reach the financial threshold required. The existing EU countries aren't going to vote to allow Scotland and Wales in just so they can give them endless handouts. There would be uproar amongst the German electorate for a start. Never mind that Spain would veto because they won't want to encourage their own separatists. Ireland are a different proposition although the RoI I don't think want NI.

So are many parts of Scotland. And the USA. And certainly China. Can you point out a beautiful utopia with absolutely no poverty or hardship?

I think you've started this whole thread just to slag off England. You could've done that without the waffle about pensions.

I paid in for my civil service pension and my local authority pension🤷‍♀️. They have their own schemes.

The state pension, along with all benefits, comes from taxes/NI , as they always have.

That's one of the issues with devolution referenda - who should be asked ?
If there is a referendum on whether one part of the UK should split from another, then should all of those potentially affected be given the chance to vote, not just those directly in the part to be split ?

Take the issue of Irish reunification - ask the people of NI, and I imagine they'd vote to remain part of the UK. but ask those in Eire and rUK and I suspect they'd vote for reuniification.

Because they all spend far more than they raise in taxes. Scotland for instance spends more than £4,600 than it spends in taxes with rUK filling the gap. If an Indy Scotland wants to break even it has to get that £4,600 per man, woman and child back.

The Scottish nhs has a separate pension from the other NHS’s so it won’t be included, and I was talking about the state pension rather than the public sector pension, but as Scotland has had lots more funding than the England over the years, Westminster would surely be well placed to tell Scotland it should have been making provisions (rather than pissing around with baby boxes, giving money to Hamas, and spending 10 x more than it needed to on ferries).

Not obvious at all. Scotland would have to meet various criteria including financial and it would likely be many years before their independent economy could meet these. Also all current member states would have to agree.

The special pot of money only really applies to personal pensions. Anyone in a defined benefits or career average group type scheme is contributing into a big pot that they have their pension paid from when necessary. The difference with civil service pensions is their salaries are actuarial reduced prior to paying to account for the contribution. This is good for the government as it appears civil servants don't pay contributions and the government gets to keep part of the payroll. There is no big pot for civil servants as the government simply keeps that bit of payroll and pays out of general taxation. For many public sector employees they do actually have pension funds that they and the authorities contribute into.

Best thing to do if you’re really worried and have quite a few years before pension age -is save independently whatever you are able to.Or look at getting a S.I.P.P
That is what myself and DH and we both had to retire early- we’ve had to use the savings to pay the bills until pension kicks in.

Basically she’s admitting that England bankrolls Scotland… Maybe it’s time to cut Scotland loose, let it become our penniless neighbour whilst we become wealthier, not having to pay out subsidies!… Or maybe not, and admit that we are better together as a UK.

Why do you assume the sum of the individual nations will be poorer than the UK?

I don't know how Wales are going to honour public sector pensions if we go independent. 🙈

Unlike “funded” local government pensions, your pension contribution wasn’t put into a ring-fenced “fund” from which your pension was then paid. It was just received by HM Treasury when you paid it… and now they pay you what they owe based on the terms of the Civil Service Pension Scheme. That’s what “unfunded” means in the context of pensions.

No, I think you are completely mistaken as to how this would work….

Yes, the Public Sector Pensions Act 2013 is UK Law, but unless there was a civil war and the countries of the UK split apart in a violent and disordered way, any dissolution of the Union would by agreement.

This agreement would involve an arrangement for converting current UK law in the new the law of the new states, in much the same way as huge amounts of EU regulations were simply converted directly into UK law upon Brexit.

The new states would then retain, repeal and amend these laws as they saw fit… which realistically wouldn’t involve them erasing all the accumulated earned pension rights of their public sector workers!

You’re correct. Local Government is funded. (Ie there’s an actual fund with real assets) but health, teachers, civil service etc pensions are just an expenditure line on the Government’s annual budget, like state pensions.

The UK wouldn’t be renaging on anything. The UK that made any pension agreement would no longer exist. There would be any remaining UK nations and the independent nation, and it would be the independent nation that would be responsible for providing its citizens with a pension. The entity that is made up of the countries that remain in the UK would have no responsibility whatsoever to pay state or public sector pensions to citizens of another country. Those citizens would have their pension provided by their government.

This isn’t tricky stuff. It isn’t something to be ‘negotiated’. Any politician that tells you otherwise is talking out of their backside. It’s worse nonsense than Boris’s Brexit bus.