- 9 March 2011.

Commenting ahead of Lord Hutton’s report on public sector pensions, Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union said;

“Lord Hutton in his first report last October recognised that public sector pensions are far from ‘gold plated’ and that the changes already made in 2007 are cutting their costs. Despite this, he appears to have swallowed the lie that public sector pensions are still unaffordable.

“The National Audit Office has confirmed that public sector pension costs are falling as expected due to the reforms already in place. Teachers are already paying more, the normal pension age has been raised to 65 for new entrants and employer contributions have been capped.

“We know the Government wants to attack public sector pensions. Their plans are based on politics, not economics. Pensions have already been cut by changing their link from RPI to CPI inflation. As a result of this, next month’s pension increase will be 1.5% less than it should have been.

“The Government’s already stated desire to increase pension contributions by more than half could cost newly qualified teachers up to £60 a month – an additional cost which could see many leaving the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme on the grounds that it is no longer affordable. This would indeed be an irony when the scheme is affordable at a national level but not at an individual level.

“The real pension problem is in the private sector where two-thirds of employees are not in any employer-backed scheme. Cutting public sector pensions as well will just make more pensioners poorer and put the cost of supporting them onto the State and future taxpayers. We need decent pensions for all.”