Should civil servants’ defined‑benefit pension schemes be closed to align with the private sector?
The Civil Service Pension Scheme is an unfunded defined-benefit arrangement covering 1.7 million members, including 606,000 active contributors. It guarantees inflation-linked pensions based on career-average earnings with employer costs often exceeding 25% of salary. In contrast, most private-sector workers are in defined-contribution schemes where retirement income depends on investment performance and contributions, with far lower employer input averaging around 4%. Recent administration failures by contractor Capita have caused backlogs and payment delays, fuelling scrutiny of the scheme's overall sustainability and fairness to taxpayers.
12 Opinions
Completely. The comments from people saying they have to contribute is true but their contributions compared to employer contributions is relatively small. And that is picked up by the taxpayer. They should have access to the same pension schemes as the rest of us.
But the departments need cut back
This is not a “free” scheme for employees in civil service they have to contribute a percentage of their salary along with the employer. Much like train drivers (private sector) and other occupations that still have defined benefit pensions.
Yes. Why am I paying into a scheme where others get more than I do?
Absolutely yes. Virtually no one in the private sector can afford to have anything like this, and yet we fund this for civil servants who devise this for themselves and send us the invoice. It's bad enough now, but projections show this is the next disaster waiting to happen. The triple lock isn't the problem, it's these pensions with enormous employer contributions that the rest of us fund, but will never get ourselves.
Defined benefit schemes are unaffordable. It’s also extremely unfair for the taxpayer to subsidise these far more generous pensions
They extra large pensions eat into the public funds. Give civil servants a relative pension, and the chance to add to it themselves, the same as everyone else
The jobs for life boys and girls get great pensions for life and yet few of them would make much progress in the private sector. Let's face facts, if the pensions and jobs for life were restricted to match the private sector, there would be a stampede out the door because it is one of the most attractive perks - maybe then we'd get talented people in to run things more efficiently.
The problem with the current state of the civil service is that, while we need highly capable people in order to things done, the resources aren’t there to offer them anywhere near competitive salaries. One of the last things left to actually draw someone competent towards the civil service is the pension - remove that without boosting something else (e.g., wages), then we’ll be in an even worse position than we are now.
Why should the parasites have it better? The quality of their work is terrible, the higher in hierarchy the worse. Absolut joke in terms of value for money.