In fact, the entire Westminster class is right now engaged in perpetuating a massive, deceptive delusion: that the UK can keep spending more and more on pensions, without anyone having to foot the bill.
Reports this weekend suggested the figure will leap again this year, to £57bn. Even if all public sector pensions closed today, the existing bill alone would exceed £100bn a year by 2050. These revelations attracted barely any attention, so immune have we become to the eye-watering cost of Britain’s pensions.
It isn’t just Britain’s cushy public sector pensions that are the issue – an even bigger problem is the soaring cost of the state pension. Add them together and you find that the UK is spending around £225bn a year on pensions and pension benefits alone. That equates to £1 in every £6 the government spends.
If we are to continue throwing money at pensions, maintaining the triple lock and gold-plated public sector pensions too, then our politicians must start being honest about who is going to foot the bill. Either more and more money will have to be diverted from other areas, or taxes will have to go up and up.
Instead, we go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Rather than act to rein in pension spending, Labour ministers boast about their decision to maintain the triple lock that sees billions each year spent on above-inflation pension increases for millions of retirees, including those already well-off. And rather than insist that chunky pay rises for doctors, nurses, teachers and train drivers were accompanied by major reform of public sector pensions, ministers just happily handed over the cheques.
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They know it is a delusion. They have seen the figures and the forecasts and the charts. They have heard the warnings from economists. And still they continue to peddle the lie.
This cannot go on forever. Sooner rather than later, politicians are going to be left with no option but to face up to reality. To avoid the problem that no one wants to be first to shatter the illusion, perhaps a cross-party national commission on pensions is needed, to give political parties the cover to start being honest about pension spending without it costing them at the polls.
Unless something changes quickly, soon there won’t be enough young workers paying the taxes needed to pay for today’s pension bill, let alone the soaring costs that are coming. There are currently 3.4 working-age people for every pensioner; that is expected to fall to 2.7 within the next 50 years. You do not have to be an expert economist or trained demographer to see the problem, yet the government refuses to even talk about, let alone work out how it might use the tax system and childcare subsidies to help address it.
Whatever path we choose to go down, the journey starts with a reality check about the mess we are in. For now, that reality is one our politicians would still rather avoid. And so the delusion continues. Until when, and at what cost, only time will tell.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is a former Westminster editor
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