It is time to address the pensions bombshell that is going to cripple future generations and, no, it’s not the triple lock. Public sector provisions are costing us billions of pounds a year but barely get a mention in the debate about fairness. Gold-plated pensions for civil servants, doctors, teachers and so on mean we have a staggering £2.4 trillion in liabilities. Around £50 billion is paid out each year but there is no special pot where contributions have been held to cover the cost. Every year there is a shortfall between the amount that has been put in and taken out. Recently, that has been about £2bn but it went as high as £9.9bn in the 2010s. Eight out of ten public sector workers are on old-fashioned schemes that give them a set proportion of their salary in retirement and it is usually protected against inflation. It is guaranteed for life and there is no risk of it losing its value.

Private sector workers can only dream of such a good deal. Just seven per cent of those working in business or industry have secured that type of lucrative arrangement.

A public sector worker’s pension will be typically double that of a private sector employee.

The schemes were traditionally more generous to make up for lower pay, but now they earn on average just £13 a week less.

Pensions consultancy LCP looked at four public sector workers in different schemes and compared them with a private sector worker on the default contribution of 5% plus 3% from their employer.

It found that for every £1 put in, the private sector worker would get £5.34 after 20 years while an NHS worker would get £11.30, a civil servant £10.08 a teacher £9.84 and a local government employee £7.04.

According to analysis by Quilter, junior doctors, yes those who are repeatedly going out on strike for extra pay, are likely to end up with an annual pension of £125,000.

This is clearly unfair and also unsustainable but instead the first target when it comes to saving money is the triple lock.

It was introduced by the Coalition government to right the wrongs of the previous Labour government’s miserly increases to the State Pension.

Gordon Brown once put up weekly payments by just 75p. The move caused such upset that disgusted pensioners sent him bags of pennies to show their anger.

One reportedly sent the then Chancellor a cheque which was then actually cashed.

The lock means the situation can never happen again and that the state pension is gradually being brought inline with payments in other comparable countries.

It also means that when living costs spiral during a period of high inflation, pensions keep pace with those higher bills.

If inflation was under control, the state pension would not have risen by such large amounts in recent years.

In the debate after the Budget, Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh said the triple lock was unsustainable.

“You cannot have a situation where people of my generation are consuming an ever-greater proportion of national wealth through the state pension,” he told the Commons.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said this week that he cannot commit to keeping it in place.

But removing the lock would mean that state pensioners were no longer guaranteed a decent rise linked to rising living costs.

Meanwhile, the taxpayer-funded wildly generous public sector pensions that are the equivalent in size to the entire economy continue.

Neil Record, a former Bank of England economist, describes the system as a “Ponzi scheme” that will end in a crisis.

It would be ludicrous to target the triple lock, paid out to everyone, for being unfair while leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill for huge pensions that are only available to some.

Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt posted on his website this week that the generosity of the system must now be tackled.

He called for guaranteed payout schemes linked to inflation to be closed to new recruits so they fall into line with the private sector.

And he said a pension pot that covers should be built up to cover payouts.

“When it comes to public sector pensions, the system we have at the moment could not be more unfair,” he wrote.

Labour is hooked on growing the size of the state so the problem is only going to get worse.

But if it wants to continue claiming to be the party of fairness, it must stop funding lavish retirements for the public sector on the backs of the private sector workers who will be counting the pennies long into old age.