Member

I turn to incentives. One reason why this problem has arisen is that pension costs are not properly taken into account in public sector decision-making. Those adding to the workforce, or making people redundant, rarely take into account, or even know, what the long-term consequences of their decisions are. Consequences are simply passed on to the Treasury—or, in other words, on to taxpayers great and small—so, even if officials want to do the right thing, they cannot calculate what that is. I speak with experience of Whitehall myself.