Prentis defends public sector pensions - OBR softening up public opinion for onslaught on pension rights‏

UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis this morning defended public sector pensions and warned on the Radio 4 breakfast programme that, just like Canada, the Government was softening opinion to justify an attack on pensions.

The OBR claimed yesterday that the cost of public sector pension provision had more than doubled but Dave Prentis explained schemes like the LGPS are volatile to changes in the market and dependent on the value of stocks and shares. He warned the short term window of actuarial evaluation of just three years was nonsense and that when looking at the future sustainability of schemes valuations needed to explore a twenty year period. The General Secretary also pointed out that reforms to public sector pensions had already been agreed for the NHS and other schemes under the previous government.

Pensions are complex and the differences between the schemes don’t help us articulate to the general public what cuts to pensions mean in practice. It will be a hard slog but lazy journalist who don’t dig below the headline grabbing attacks from the OBR are far game. Today proved that we can coherently respond to school-boy journalism that fails to grasp the real issue of public sector pension provision. This argument is ours for the winning.

Audio link to follow