"Unaffordable gold-plated scheme ‘represents everything wrong with public sector culture’"
Telegraph: 1st March 2025: Telegraph reveals a further example of the two tier culture operating in Britain today
"Taxpayers have been handed an eight-figure bill for a gold-plated government pension scheme that cannot afford its payments, new figures show.
The Environment Agency’s closed pension fund has taken £1.25bn in government bailouts and needs almost £400m more, according to a Freedom of Information request by The Telegraph. The scheme still holds £264m in assets, but has lost £65m through investments in the past two years alone. The taxpayer has funded every pension payment made in the past 19 years...
...Neil Record, a pensions expert and former Bank of England economist, said it was a glaring example of “both waste and protecting public sector workers at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.” He said: “A whole panoply of scheme compliance and administration is effectively being wasted because the Government has chosen to bail out the failing scheme with cash every year – leaving the pension scheme as onlooker. “Were it in the private sector, the same scheme would fall into the Pension Protection Fund, and the pensioners would see a fall in their pensions – sharing the costs of the bailout.
“It is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with public sector culture.”