Boris Johnson’s pensions tsar has warned that the National Health Service faces a half-trillion-pound pension deficit and urged the government to tackle generous public sector retirement packages that have become unaffordable.
In a report to the Treasury being submitted today, Edi Truell, the millionaire City financier who was appointed last month to advise the mayor of London on pensions and investments, said that the cost to the taxpayer of funding the retirement of 1.3 million former and present NHS staff was close to topping £500 billion.
The combination of an ageing workforce and lower-than-expected investment returns has more than doubled the health service’s pension liabilities in only six years.
Mr Truell has warned George Osborne that to begin addressing the growing problem, the NHS must