Is the gold-plating rubbing off MPs' pensions?
MPs will start the week with a bitter pill: their pensions are about to be trimmed.
Recommendations to IPSA, which determines MPs' pay and allowances, by the pay advisory body, the Senior Salaries Review Board, have just been published. They would scrape a little of the famed "gold-plating" from the MPs' scheme - but the government could yet go further, to bring the deal for MPs into line with whatever fate is decreed by the Public Service Pensions Commission, headed by Lord Hutton, the former Labour cabinet minister.
The proposals include:
• Changing the basis of pension accrual from "final-salary" to career average;
• Increasing the normal pension age for MPs from 65 to 68;
• Restricting the rate of indexation to the lesser of the Retail Price Index (RPI) or 2.5%;
• Standardising the accrual rate at 1/60th of salary per year of service and the member contribution rate at 5.5% of pay; and
• Freezing benefits already accrued on a final salary basis, and uprating in line with RPI.
Describing the current pension scheme as "not sustainable", the Leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, added: "Taken together, the SSRB estimates that this package would reduce the underlying rate of Exchequer contribution to 10.5% of payroll."
But ultimately, the cuts to the scheme may be even deeper. I'm off to gauge reactions...
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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