By Edmund Conway

In a document released on its website only a few hours before the Chancellor's pre-Budget report (PBR) statement, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) laid out the definitive cost taxpayers will have to bear for both the state old age pension and public sector pensions.

The document reveals:

 

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• The total public sector pensions bill is now £810bn, a figure confirmed later in the day in the pre-Budget report. The majority of the state employees are on generous final salary schemes unattainable elsewhere in the UK.

• This bill for key public sector workers' pensions has rocketed by 20pc between 2006 and 2008.

• The Government Actuary's Department's estimate of the cost of the state pension due to all workers is £1,350bn as of 2005 – equivalent to almost 100pc of Britain's annual economic output.

The entire bill of around £2.2 trillion would more than triple the size of the national debt overnight. It is entirely unfunded, so will have to be paid directly by future generations of taxpayers, rather than out of a pot contributed to by the pensioners themselves.

Taxpayers face £2 trillion unfunded pensions liability

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