On the go: The government has promised to compensate some public sector pensions' increased employer contribution costs, but other pensions spending was unmentioned.
Announced today, chancellor Sajid Javid has promised school funding to cover pension costs will rise from £0.9b in 2019-20 to £1.5b from 2020-21 through to 2022-23, in a bid to address an increase in employer pension contribution rates.
The chancellor has also promised £700m to help fund pension costs for the Ministry of Defence.
While an extra £6.2bn was pledged for the National Health Service, there was no mention of the pension tax rules driving doctors to quit or retire early.
This comes a day after Government statistics showed some 200,000 individuals have opted out of the NHS pension scheme.
There have been no budget cuts announced this year, with day-to-day spending increasing at least in line with inflation, according to the HM Treasury’s Spending Round 2019, which sets out departmental spending plans for 2020-2021.
The paper sets out the “fastest planned real growth in day-to-day departmental spending in 15 years”, with day-to-day departmental spending as of 2019-20 to 2020-21 expected to grow at 4.1 per cent.
Additionally, the Department for Work and Pensions will see a 1.9 per cent increase in its resource budget from 2019-20 to 2020-21, and a £106m package to fund plans “to help it deliver reforms to support the most vulnerable in society”.
