Private-sector workers in Scotland are paying £300m a year more into gold-plated state pensions for other people than they are into their own schemes.

Workers in the private sector contribute £1.1 billion towards their own private occupational schemes. In addition they are subsidising more generous public-sector schemes to the tune of £1.4 billion, 27% more.

The findings highlight the growing pensions divide between the public and the private sector, and the crippling burden that workers in the private sector are carrying.

Last week The Sunday Times revealed that over the past five years, pension contributions paid by public-sector employers had increased by a third to £130 billion. In 2004, taxpayers paid £461m into local government pension schemes, as well as £404m for NHS staff and £252m for teachers. By 2007, that had risen to £600m, £520m and £286m respectively.

Figures published last week by Hargreaves Lansdown, a firm of independent financial analysts, show the impact of the pensions divide.

“We want everyone to enjoy a decent pension, but the cost of that pension has to be transparent. More than half of the money that private-sector workers spend on pensions is going towards paying for someone else’s pension,” said Tom McPhail, the company’s head of pensions research.

“The government has to bring the whole question of public-sector pensions under the scrutiny of an independent commission — this problem seems to be too politically sensitive for any minister to have the courage to confront it head on.”

Last night, critics made renewed calls to scrap unfunded final-salary pensions for staff in the public sector.

“It’s not fair that private-sector workers are forced to pay more into public-sector pensions than they can afford to save for their own retirement,” said Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

“These public-sector pensions packages are unsustainable and outdated and they must be replaced with contribution-based deals like in the rest of the economy.

“We are opening up a serious divide between the public and private sectors that could leave millions not only impoverished but crippled by the burden that public sector pensions impose.”

Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland, said public-sector final-salary schemes should be closed to new entrants.

The Pensions Policy Institute last month found that UK private-sector workers pay £14 billion into their own pension schemes and up to £21 billion through taxation into public sector staff schemes.

A Treasury spokesman said: “Reforms introduced by the government, including changes to the age at which pensions are paid, and cost capping, will ensure substantial savings.”

A Scottish government spokesman said its pension scheme reforms for NHS staff, teachers and local government workers would save more than £1 billion.

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