An internal Cabinet letter from Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in May to the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, described the plans to make public sector workers – especially in the National Health Service – pay more, work longer and get less when they do retire, as “unrealistic” and “inappropriate”. The proposals fall short of Government commitments to maintain gold standard pensions, warned the Health Secretary.
Newspapers later reported that Education Secretary Michael Gove had expressed earlier misgivings. Mr Lansley pointed out that the proposals, based on former Labour Department of Work and Pensions Minister John Hutton’s recommendations for the Conservative-led Government, took no account of the realities of the NHS workforce.
The vast majority of NHS employees are female and their average working lives are 18 years long because of breaks in service. “It seems unrealistic to suggest that pension scheme design should be based on the assumption that a predominantly female workforce should need to work full-time, 48-year careers in future to receive a full pension”, said Mr Lansley in his five-page letter.
That letter was subsequently disowned by Department of Health spokespersons who said the Health Secretary had changed his mind in the time since it was written and it was now “out of date”.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber and Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the Lansley letter could have been written by either one of them and they completely endorsed the warnings.
Mr Barber said: “[Andrew Lansley] confirms that the Government is grabbing money from public sector workers to pay down a deficit they did nothing to create, even at a time when their pay is frozen for two years and many are facing job losses. “Most tellingly, he says the Government is trying to take so much out of public sector pensions and impose so many extra costs on workers that there is a very real danger staff will simply opt out of their pensions.”
