Letter: Taxpayers should call public service tune

Dave Prentis of Unison has said that Lord Hutton's proposals on public sector pensions will be the last straw and will provoke massive unrest among the sector's employees.

He and his colleagues appear to have no understanding of the dire state of the country's finances nor the pressures on the people who really employ their members: we, the council- and PAYE taxpayers.

Nor does Unison seem to understand the rapidly growing anger in the general population about the unfairness of the demands made upon the rest of us to sustain their members.

The number of workers in this sector increased by around a million under the bunch of incompetents who formed the New Labour administrations in the past 13 years.

With the possible exception of a few areas in the NHS, we are no better served than we were in 1997.

The wage bill and, in particular, pensions in the sector are out of control.

Yes, public sector employees do pay pension contributions of around 6 per cent of salary; however, they receive benefits that would require contributions of almost 30 per cent of salary.

We, the public, pay the difference from our taxes - in many cases from our own, unprotected, pensions which were hugely damaged by the measures introduced by the laughingly titled "Iron Chancellor", Gordon Brown. Can Mr Prentis please explain the fairness in this?

Unison frequently trots out the fact that the average public sector pension is a lowly figure of 4,000 per annum.

What it does not say is that this is a function of the length of the employees' service; in the private sector the corresponding pension would be very significantly less for the same members' contributions and length of employment.

In some local authorities, almost a quarter of council tax revenue goes to meet pension payments. This is a nonsense which must not and cannot be sustained.

Central and local government must hold firm in the face of the coming storm of protest at the cuts. No-one can explain adequately to me why, on top of the Strasbourg freeloaders, the Westminster legions and Holyrood hordes, we need 32 local authorities here in Scotland (there are more than 450 in England).

We are grossly, ridiculously over-governed and enough is enough.

Unison and its members must not be allowed to blackmail the employers into forcing the rest of us to pay over the top for an obviously bloated public sector and we, the public, should vociferously support a tough stance by the authorities.

David K Allan

Mainshill

Haddington, East Lothian