Comment

Firstly, it was one of the best attended conferences I’d been to in some time. Held at City Hall and with a strong set of panellists, including NAPF’s Joanne Segars, London Pensions Fund Authority’s Anthony Mayer, Local Government Employers (LGE) Terry Edwards and Brian Strutton from GMB, it’s clear to see why so many council representatives were there. That and the fact it was free of charge to attend of course.

Secondly, despite the amiable nature of the panel sessions, all of which were geared towards showing that LGPS was sustainable and that scary headlines were a result of the national press misunderstanding how the scheme was set up, there was a discernable air of cynicism among the audience members.

Several options for change were cited throughout the conference, including moving to a career average scheme, tinkering with contribution rates and normal retirement ages, and even talks of cost and risk sharing being introduced.

But such was the panellists’ confidence in how the scheme was currently performing that one even suggested the symposium could in fact have been titled “What a load of b******s” in reference to the overdramatised concerns over its funding.

During the coffee and lunch breaks however, a different story was emerging. Several of the local council representatives I spoke to said they were disappointed with the lack of counter arguments being presented during the panel sessions. One went as far as to call the panels “too cosy”, adding: “Initially we came to debate the sustainability of LGPS; now we’re all supposed to assume there isn’t a question of sustainability.”

The same audience member also described Ian Greenwood’s (chair of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum) speech, in which he decried the class-ist attitude of the general public towards the lower paid public sector workers, as the “biggest load of tosh I’ve ever heard”.

“This idea that public sector workers are paid vastly less than their private counterparts is rubbish,” my dispirited co-attendee continued. “Figures show that the number of people moving from jobs in the public sector to the private has slowed dramatically, even before the credit crunch: it’s because there’s more parity in terms of pay these days and, let’s face it, working for a public sector employer isn’t as aggressive as working for a private corporate is it?”

Other comments ringing around the coffee hall included “it’s frustrating that the panel appears to be living in a bubble” and “it’s all a lot of hot air: all talk and no action”.