Tynwald rejected a bid to delay a move to rein in the costs of the public sector pension scheme.

The call to adjourn the debate on the cost-sharing proposal to December was made by sacked minister Chris Thomas, who had been in charge of driving through reforms.

He claimed ’this was an issue of human resources and more generally of industrial relations’, and put at risk the ’precious’ goodwill of public servants. Douglas Central MHK Mr Thomas said there was ’misunderstanding and miscommunication’ just because of the insistence on moving this item to a vote that day.

Julie Edge (Onchan) said it would be wrong for Tynwald to put something through without the unions having a full opportunity to understand the cost sharing mechanism.

Middle MHK Bill Shimmins accused Mr Thomas of trying ’to kick the can down the road for another six months’.

He said he continued to have real concerns about the ongoing significant liability that the public sector pension scheme represents to every single person in the island.

The deficit was now measured in billions rather than originally tens of millions and then hundreds of millions, he said.

Mr Shimmins, who failed in his bid last year to close the public sector pension scheme to new entrants, pointed out that Mr Thomas had advocated at that time that cost sharing was the way forward.

Ray Harmer, who has replaced Mr Thomas as Policy and Reform Minister and vice-chairman of the Public Sector Pensions Authority, said: ’This is not the time to dither and delay.

’If we don’t do this we are making things less sustainable, we are betraying future generations.’

He likened Mr Thomas to being at the goal ready to score but instead was trying to kick the ball back up the field.

Mr Harmer explained that the PSPA had been working on a cost sharing solution since 2012 but this had been put on hold several times due to further reforms of the public sector pension schemes.

PSPA member Jane Poole-Wilson, who is vice-chairman of the PSPA, said the reasons put forward to adjourn the debate were not justified.

She said cost sharing had long been recognised by all parties as an important part of public sector pension reform to ’help manage costs into the future’.

Mrs Poole-Wilson said following a debate on the legacy funding gap in March last year, the PSPA was now working on proposals for a voluntary defined contributions scheme which would have to be approved by Tynwald.

Mr Thomas’s amendment failed with just two votes in support, and the motion as originally tabled was carried unanimously.