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Public Service Pensions

That is an extremely good point. Under the earlier cap and share arrangement, there would have been a three-yearly salami slicing of pensions: every three years, public service workers would face the prospect of increases in their contributions and reductions in their benefits. The principal feature of the new scheme, which protects them from that prospect, is the link between the normal pension age and the state pension age. As the state pension age rises, so will the retirement age for public service workers. That arrangement, which Lord Hutton recommended, is the best and simplest way of protecting public service schemes from the longevity risk in the future, which is why those schemes are fundamentally sustainable.