Public Sector Pensions...

Old_Slaphead

Andy_L wrote: »

Except of course for those accrued rights to RPI indexation

I think there should be another index - the PPI - which contained all pensioner-related costs & appropriately weighted......pensions should be indexed accordingly.

Many costs in the RPI are not relevant to pensioners.

Andy_L

dori2o wrote: »

The thing is, the last government tried this, pushed through unagreed changes, what happened, they lost the battle and the courts overturned their changes.

What makes Cameron think he will be able to do the same thing without it being challenged.

As far as I know, any changes to my contract have to be agreed by my union and the majority of the workforce, otherwise we'll be out on strike again, and back into the courts.

AIUI the statuatory documents setting out the rules of public sector pensions simply specify indexation "by an amount determined by the secretary of state" (or similiar).

There is then a separate piece of legislation which obliges the SoS to increase both S2P/SERPS and Public Sector pensions by Octobers RPI so just changing that act gets round the contract problem.

Increasing the indexation of the basic pension keeps ordinary folk happy so its quite an elegant solution that I did not see coming

3 problems I see:

1. Its undermined Hutton's report into public sector pensions
2. Its now even harder to compare private & public pensions as you can't get CPI linked annuities/bonds
3. Pre-election statments said they considered the indexation rate to be a part of accrued benefits

and an outside chance that he'll look very silly if CPI maintains its abnormal stance of being higher than RPI