Member

Can we afford these public sector pensions? Let us look, for example, at the numbers that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe came up with. Totally coincidentally, we are paying about £57 billion out and we are putting contributions of about £58 billion in. I have spoken to many civil servants and public sector workers, who have harangued me and said, “Oh, my pension is assured; I’m paying in every year”. I say to them, “Do you know that your money is being used to pay people who have already retired?” They say, “No, that cannot be right”. I show them the numbers and explain it to them, and they are appalled to discover that no money is being put aside to pay the pensions that they have been promised. Even public sector workers are being fooled by this.