The absence of growth and the importance of credibility are recurring themes in this
morning’s papers. John Lord Hutton has told the BBC that revised growth figures make pension reform even more urgent, and he added
that the deal that was put before trade unions was ‘perfectly credible’. Meanwhile, David Cameron has
insisted that ministers increase their pension contributions by an average of 4.2 per cent (more than the 3.2 average across the public sector) to show that ‘we are all in this
together’.
Pensions also feature in an Independent on Sunday interview with Tim Farron, the Lib Dem President. Farron says he has ‘sympathy’ with state employees who are caught between the macho posturing of ‘right wing politicians’ and union leaders. The words ‘we must not return to the 1980s’ follow not long after.
But these are the 2010s, not the 1980s – and it is a time of unremitting economic contraction, as Danny Alexander acknowledged in that now infamous Newsnight interview he gave on Tuesday.
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