§ Mr. DavidsonTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what action the Treasury has taken to quantify unfunded state pension liabilities in Britain and the European Union since 1996; if he will publish figures for(a) unfunded state pension liabilities and (b) unfunded occupational scheme liabilities for (ii) the UK and (ii) those EU countries for which comparable figures are available; and if he will make a statement. [48700]
§ Mr. Andrew SmithThe Government Actuary's Department estimates that as at 31 March 2001 the liabilities for UK unfunded public service pension schemes were about £350 billion and figures for schemes administered by Departments are now published annually in pension scheme Resource Accounts. We do not have comparable information for unfunded private sector schemes or for equivalent unfunded public and private occupational arrangements in other EU countries. On a slightly different basis the Government Actuary has estimated that, as at 1 April 1999, discounted future expenditure on the state pension from past contributions is £1,108 billion (as shown in Table 13.4 of Inland Revenue Statistics 2001, on the Inland Revenue website).
Comparable figures for state pension expenditures across the EU are not published by Governments. However, the European Commission's Economic Policy Committee (EPC) has published projections of annual expenditure on state pension-related expenditure as a share of GDP in EU member states (in the EPC report "Budgetary Challenges posed by Ageing Populations" of 24 October 2001). Since this study the UK Government 93W has announced the introduction of the pension credit from October 2003, which will slightly increase UK public pension spending as a share of GDP, although this expected to stay broadly around its current level in the long-term ("The Pension Credit: long-term projections", DWP, January 2002).