An­tho­ny Wil­son

I am in favour of this coun­try re­ward­ing those who have served it dur­ing their work­ing lives as well as is pos­si­ble in their re­tire­ment. But, as far as this col­umn is con­cerned, the new pen­sion arrange­ments for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers–that have been the sub­ject of sig­nif­i­cant de­bate over the last fort­night–pro­pose changes to the lo­cal pen­sion sys­tem that are too rad­i­cal and too rich.

While the amount of ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture on the pro­posed pen­sions may not "break" the Trea­sury, if these bills are ac­cept­ed with­out sig­nif­i­cant amend­ments, they would pro­vide a dan­ger­ous prece­dent and a bench­mark for pub­lic-sec­tor unions that def­i­nite­ly would break the Trea­sury.

Hav­ing award­ed them­selves huge pen­sion in­creas­es, what moral au­thor­i­ty would the Gov­ern­ment in gen­er­al and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in par­tic­u­lar have to tell the pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion that a pub­lic ser­vant af­ter 34 years of ser­vice is not en­ti­tled to 100 per cent of their fi­nal salary as a pen­sion?

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