Defending public sector pensions

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The general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union has criticised the government's desire to "artificially divide" public servants from private sector workers, as the debate over pension provision continues.

Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, claims that talks between the government and the unions over public sector pensions have been "constructive" and have made "progress". He must have been at different meetings.

The truth is, despite our continued opposition, the government has consistently refused to compromise on three key principles: increasing employee contributions; raising the retirement age and linking it with the state pension; and devaluing pensions through changing inflation indexation.

None of these measures are necessary. All the experts, including the National Audit Office and Institute for Fiscal Studies, agree that the costs of public sector pensions are falling as a proportion of national income in the long term. Even Lord Hutton's so-called 'independent' report acknowledges this.

On contributions, not a penny of the £2.8bn the government wants to raise is destined for pension schemes – they don't need it. It will go straight to the Treasury to help George Osborne pay off a budget deficit caused by several factors, but not the modest pay and pensions of public servants. In effect, a tax on working in the public sector.

Also, given calculations of future costs already account for projected demographic changes, the government is scaremongering about the fact that people are living longer. Increased longevity should be something to celebrate, not an excuse to force people to work until they drop.

Finally, the switch from using RPI to CPI to index pensions is a massive devaluation of people's pensions. And not only existing pensioners, but also the growing number of new entrants to the civil service whose career average scheme is uprated annually.

The scheme they are members of was agreed in 2005/6 when Lord Hutton was just John Hutton, cabinet minister. At the time, we accepted the equality arguments and the scheme we agreed was a good one with a decent accrual rate. The one currently being proposed by this government is much worse.

These are important issues. But instead of discussing them, the government has preferred to try to close down debate – and artificially divide public servants from their colleagues, friends and family in the private sector – using apocalyptic language such as the prime minister's overblown claim that the system was "in danger of going broke", when costs are clearly falling.

We want honest debate. We want to talk about how the public servants we represent can, on average, look forward to an occupational pension of around £80 a week. We want to discuss the scandal of the entirely avoidable collapse of private sector pensions and how the long term costs of this are being borne by the taxpayer. And we want to debate the 'fairness' of FTSE 100 directors retiring on multi-million pound pensions when their workforces have seen their pensions all but wiped out.

Ministers have been rumbled trying to mislead the public about what the nation can afford. We believe we are right to oppose their plans, and we are already talking to more unions about further industrial action in the autumn if the government continues to ignore the facts and threaten everything for which public servants have ever worked.

Throughout recess, ePolitix.com will be focusing on a different policy theme each week. This week we are featuring articles with a focus on the public sector and government cuts.