You asked
Based on the following statement;
"Pension liabilities do not represent debt in that they do not constitute previous borrowing which has to be serviced or ultimately repaid".
What evidence does the ONS have that state and civil service pensions will not be paid?
How does this play with the ONS's standards charter that you aren't informing the public that they won't get their pensions?
Equally, how does it play legally, in particular with Section 2 of the 2006 Fraud act?
Has the ONS and its staff taken legal advice to check if they are not subject to a legal case when the state pension is cut?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We note that your quotation is from a 2012 ONS article (“Pensions in the National Accounts – A fuller picture of the UK’s funded and unfunded pension obligations”). The full quote from that article is:
“Pension liabilities do not represent debt in that they do not constitute previous borrowing which has to be serviced or ultimately repaid. However, they are liabilities in the sense that they represent the obligations outstanding implied by current pension rules and legislation. In the case of unfunded pensions which are the responsibility of government, these obligations need to be met out of future revenues and receipts. Of course pension rules and legislation can be changed and, for this reason, pension liabilities are properly defined as ‘contingent pension obligations’ rather than debt.”
It can be seen from this fuller quote that we are not suggesting that pension liabilities will or will not be met but rather that these liabilities do not meet the definition of government debt instruments. Government debt (as reported in the monthly Public Sector Finances) has a very specific definition and excludes pension liabilities, in accordance with the European definition of government debt prescribed in EU regulation. So in our reporting of government debt, we are not making any assumptions about whether accrued-to-date pension liabilities will be met or not, but are reporting government liabilities in the National Accounts and Public Sector Finances in accordance with international statistical rules and legislation.
As mentioned in previous correspondence, we are developing methods and data sources to produce the ‘Supplementary Table for Accrued-to-Date Pension Entitlements in Social Insurance’. As noted in this article the Table is planned to be published in 2018 and it will include all pension liabilities (and associated transactions)including those of the State Pension. The 2012 article you quote includes initial estimates for this Table for 2010.
In regard to your final question, we can confirm that we have not taken legal advice on this issue.