Much praise to EPC author Angus Hanton !
Back in April 2010, Angus argued on our Platform section – The £1 trillion black hole – public sector pension liabilities – that the government has used too high a discount rate for unfunded public sector pension liabilities – now at 5.5% compared to 3-4% in some other countries. This means that when those UK public sector pensions become due, the unforseen liability could be as much as £1 trillion pounds.
I’ve been watching the stats on our website and this article has been viewed many, many times. Of course it’s great to see people reading your work, but it means so much more when they listen and act on it.
So following the EPC’s and Angus’s promotion of the article and the issue, we were pleasantly surprised to note in George Osborne’s speech last week the following words;
“. . .we will carry out, as the interim report suggests, a full public consultation now on the appropriate discount rate used to set contributions to these pensions“.