Good progress is being made to solve problems with public sector pensions Policy and Reform Minister, Chris Thomas has revealed.

At a presentation at legislative buildings the Minister said that recent reforms, which led to members of government pensions schemes paying higher contributions to receive lower benefits, had resulted in improvements but he added that there was still some way to go.

The Public Sector Pensions Authority (PSPA) has undertaken actuarial valuations of all the schemes it manages.

Preliminary results were laid out by Mr Thomas, showing the long-term cost of benefits has fallen by 1% (28.8% of pay to 27.7% of pay).

Changes to the unified scheme that have already been implemented include a reduction in all future service benefits by 6%.

From next year, there will be 2.5% increase in the contributions of all current and future new members of the scheme, staged over three years from April 2018.

The actuarial valuation showed that past service liabilities have however risen from £2.06 billion in 2013 to £2.34 billion in 2016. Although this is a high figure and reflects total pension liabilities, it is not an amount the government must pay immediately, but rather reflects payments expected over the next 60 or 70 years.

Negotiations over pensions for teachers and judiciary are expected to be completed by April 2018, while an agreement on police pensions is expected by the end of the year.

Mr Thomas said: ’We’ve got huge issues and huge challenges to do with the public sector pensions legacy which we do need to address but we can’t get over those without also making sure that the scheme adds up in the future so that’s what we’ve been addressing.’

’In February an amendment was moved by a treasury departmental member to make the Public Sector Pensions Authority (PSPA) jointly responsible to take something to the Council of Ministers in Tynwald in November. We are working to that timetable. There is no reason to believe we won’t be standing in front of Tynwald with a report which will generate a large amount of debate among members and the Manx general public.

’The PSPA and Treasury are working together to investigate options. There is no great divide between the PSPA and Treasury, we both know the seriousness of the task and we’ve got to come up with options that will tackle not only the future, but the legacy funding gap in the past.’

’Not all of the schemes are as yet reformed but those that are reformed, we are already seeing some of the benefits.’