§ Mr. Barry FieldTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list those areas of public employment for which there is no funded pension scheme; if he will tabulate the liabilities of current funding by category, type, Ministry and any other appropriate description; and if he will list those industries that have been privatised whose employees now have a funded pension scheme.
§ Mr. BrookeThe majority of public service schemes —Civil Service, armed forces, judiciary, fire, police—are unfunded and financed on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, although two—the National Health Service and the teachers—are "notionally funded" (that is, in his periodic valuations the Government Actuary creates a notional fund, and calculates whether this is in balance, in surplus, or in deficit). Only the local government superannuation scheme and the parliamentary pension scheme are fully funded, although a number of small non-departmental public bodies (for example, Medical Research Council) also have funded schemes.
The local government superannuation scheme in England and Wales comprises 88 separate funds which are valued by an actuary every five years (three years from 1 April this year). Copies of these valuation reports, which contain estimates of the liabilities, are sent to the Secretary of State for the Environment. The information is not collated centrally and could be produced only at disproportionate cost. In the case of the parliamentary scheme, the liabilities are set out in the Government Actuary's report (House of Commons paper No.13) based on a valuation at 1 April 1984 and laid before the House in 1986.
Private pension scheme arrangements are a matter for the individual company. However, the principal privatised industries—British Gas, British Telecom, British Airways —had funded schemes before privatisation as well as after.