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Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

I shall refer to that later, if time permits, but it is important to get the facts on the record. Watson Wyatt apparently bases its calculations on the accrual of one year's pension for an MP aged 54 who serves a further two terms, which totals nine years, and who draws a pension at the age of 65. That is by no means a typical length of service for an MP. All those things mean that some of the conclusions are wrong. The report also does not take any account of the effect of retained benefits. As a number hon. Members have said, retained benefits substantially inhibit the ability of Members to draw money from the pension scheme. My staff—in conjunction, I think, with the Government Actuary—estimate that that could overstate the pension cost by between 3 and 5 per cent., which is rather a lot. It has not taken into account Members who reach the maximum benefit limit of two thirds of pay. Again, that could overstate the pension cost by another 1 per cent. Watson Wyatt has not made any allowance for the phasing out of the early retirement provisions. The press and the general public, who are informed by the press, do not remember that on 4 November 2004 we voted to end our generous early retirement arrangements; they were to be phased out from 2009. The Government were asking civil servants and all those in the public sector to go down a similar route, although they proposed that the date for those groups be 2013. Faced with the threat of strikes across the country, the Government backed down. We made that gesture, thinking that we were leading the way and showing that we were not frightened of making the change. We thought that we would get some credit for that, but we did not—not with the public, and not with Messrs. Watson Wyatt.