Yet now those same state employers are to be spared from paying their share of a tax on private sector businesses that will amount to around £20bn in savings for the Treasury.
Baroness Ros Altmann, a former pensions minister under David Cameron, is quite right when she says that if the public sector can’t cope with imposing National Insurance on pensions then why does the Government think other employers can?
The widening chasm between productive companies (the real engines of economic growth) and the public sector (with its IV drip of taxpayers’ cash) is all the more galling when you realise that these perks often go unappreciated.
Public sector workers typically have little or no experience of working for other employers. They don’t realise just how good their pensions – better thought of as deferred pay – are.
That’s fair enough – if I was a 21-year-old nurse, I don’t think I’d be feeling grateful for money that wouldn’t be in my bank account for 40 years.
But the differences are truly incredible, and getting starker.