As John McEnroe used to say - you cannot be serious!!! At a conference last week Minister for local government John Healey described DC pensions as "cheap shot pensions" for public service staff, his rationale being that they would cost the country more for low earners. Is it just me or does this show a fundamental level of double standards equivalent to parliamentary expenses.
So they're not good enough for those in the public sector but they're deemed to be OK for those in the private sector? It remains OK for private sector workers earning less on average than their public sector counterparts to continue to fund public sector pensions at a rate equivalent to the level they fund their own? But Mr Healey says it's OK because LGPS will have its deficit paid off "within 25 years or so." That's 15 years more than schemes in the private sector are currently being given to pay off their deficits!! How can we expect a minister with this lack of understanding about pensions and wider market issues to come up with sensible proposals for reforming LGPS? But then even if he loses his job he'll still have a nice pension to fall back on!!!