Public Sector Pensions

As an amendment to motion S4M-01440 in the name of John Swinney (Public Sector Pensions), leave out from "and believes" to end and insert “; notes that the UK Government’s pension reform proposals are based on the independent review conducted by Labour’s former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Lord Hutton, which concluded that there was a clear case for change; believes that reform is inevitable because people are living longer and that these proposals will mean that most public sector employees will see no reduction in the pension that they receive at retirement, that any employee within 10 years of retirement will see their pension protected with no change in the age that they can retire and no change in the amount of pension that they will receive when they retire; believes that these reforms strike a fairer balance between what employees pay and what other taxpayers have to pay; regrets that the strikes are going ahead today while negotiations are still ongoing and in light of the new offer put forward by the UK Government; further notes the Scottish Government’s submission to the Hutton inquiry via the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, which proposes a number of options, all of which would have had the same or worse results for employees and is astonished that it proposes as one of its options a change to a defined contribution scheme, and criticises the Scottish Government for producing far-reaching proposals that would penalise employees while at the same time grandstanding against the UK Government’s proposals for reform."