Reform UK is blaming the local government pension scheme for the financial difficulties faced by councils. Ignoring the 40% cut in funding most council’s have suffered since 2010 and the 100’000s jobs lost, the deputy leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, told the Telegraph newspaper that final salary pension schemes are an ‘outrage’ and that he would take an ‘axe’ to them.
In the article Richard Tice said Reform-controlled authorities would stop offering such generous terms to new recruits and staff on existing contracts would have to accept lower annual pay rises to balance out the huge cost of funding their retirement.
“Whether people like it or not we should not be employing people on defined benefit contribution schemes,” he said. “It’s an outrage – the public can’t afford it. It’s absolutely ludicrous, and this is why the country is going bust and it’s all got to stop.”
“We’re going to have to go to war with these people. Our job is to wake people up as to where their money is going and why we’re all being ripped off.”
Tice said that if staff are on such terms “then candidly that has to be taken into account when you look at people’s annual pay rises”.
“You look at the overall cost of employment and if they’re not prepared to then a whole load of people are going to have to be made redundant,” he warned.
This shows if you vote Reform, you vote to lose either your local government pension or an annual pay rise.
Reform UK ignores the harsh reality that pay across local government is 30% lower in real terms than in 2010. After 100,000s of job losses across local government many services are maintained on a shoestring by dedicated staff working harder than ever before. There is already a recruitment crisis across many job roles. Attacking pensions will only make this worse.
Reform UK not only picks on migrants, they attack workers too.