It's disappointing that in the run up to the Budget, no economic think-tank has yet had the guts to suggest to the Chancellor one sure-fire way to tackle the £50 billion blackhole in the nation's finances. Namely, to curb the extraordinary cost to the taxpayer of bankrolling generous public sector pensions.

Maybe they believe it's too controversial an idea. They would be banging their head up against a Labour brick wall.

After all, this Government loves the public sector. After agreeing to inflation-busting pay rises across the public sector, Labour is hardly going to rattle its mighty unions by messing with their members' pensions.

Fair enough, but at the very least these think-tanks should be drawing attention to the massive strain that public sector pensions put on the nation's finances. Not simply focusing on attacking the pensions of those who work in the private sector.

Given this indifference, it has been left to a former economist at the Bank of England (Neil Record) to raise the issue.

Mr Record says the country currently owes a frightening £6 trillion in pension income to public sector workers – £57 billion of which will be paid in the current tax year.

Even if all public sector pension schemes were closed today, Mr Record says the public purse would still have to meet an annual average bill of just over £72 billion until 2105 to pay all the retirement income due.

The silence of most think-tanks is also deeply political. Like Labour, they believe in the sanctity of these deluxe pensions: arrangements that carry no investment risk for members, and paying them a retirement income based on a combination of years worked and average earnings – with inflation proofing on top. The equivalent of pension elixir.

For the record, similar schemes were once commonplace in the private sector until a certain Labour Chancellor – Gordon Brown – taxed them to the hilt. Now they're as rare as hen's teeth.

Just 661,000 workers in the private sector pay into a defined benefit pension scheme – a number dwarfed by the millions of workers putting money into a public sector pension.

Gold-plated, defined benefit, public sector pensions deserve to exist, Left-wing think-tanks argue, because our (WTF) civil servants, armed forces, firemen, teachers and doctors (among others), work hard on behalf of the country and deserve them.

It's only right therefore that taxpayers should support these key workers' pensions by effectively funding all employer contributions – and then paying their income in retirement. Most public sector pensions are unfunded which means retirement incomes are paid from the public purse as they come due – hence their label as 'pay-as-you-go' pensions.

In summary then, public sector pensions are untouchable. This explains why the Resolution Foundation – literally in bed with Labour – didn't give them a mention five days ago when outlining the tax raising ideas Rachel Reeves should include in her November Budget.

In its defence, it didn't say very much about pensions, although in the past (when Pensions Minister Torsten Bell was running the show), it called for a massive cut in the tax-free cash people can take when drawing their pension.

Such reticence to talk about this elephant in the room is scandalous, especially at a time when the Chancellor is desperately looking to make savings and raise extra tax revenue.

Indeed, you need to go back to January last year to find a think-tank (New Financial) which had the gonads to recommend a public sector pension overhaul.

The report, written by pension expert Toby Nangle, recommended all public sector pensions should be put on a funded footing. In other words, individual schemes should have assets ring-fenced and pensions paid from them.

If this happened, Mr Nangle said it would save taxpayers 'hundreds of billions of pounds' and put public sector pensions on a level playing field with defined benefit pension funds in the private sector.

Critically, as far as the Chancellor is concerned, he said it would also deepen the pool of capital available to invest in the infrastructure projects that Rachel Reeves believes would transform the UK economy.

With no think-tank prepared to go where New Century went last year, it's left to a smattering of newspapers and experts to highlight the unsustainability of public sector pensions.

Mr Record is among them as is John Ralfe, a leading pension expert. He describes the gulf between gold-plated public-sector pensions and workplace pensions as 'deeply unfair'.

'Public sector pensions are spectacularly better than private sector defined benefit schemes,' Mr Ralfe told me last week. 'And of course they're a notch up from defined contribution-based workplace pensions where employees suffer a double whammy in the form of lower overall contributions and exposure to investment risk.'

Mr Ralfe said that the last time a UK government attempted to tackle the extraordinary cost of public sector pensions, the resulting reforms (introduced in 2015) were much watered-down following pressure from the unions.

As a consequence, public sector pensions remain a cut above anything that any employer in the private sector can offer – and a horrible burden on the public purse.

By way of example, he says that civil servants currently earn the right to a pension equivalent to a fraction less than a fortieth (1/42) of their career average earnings for every year worked.

So if they work 42 years, they get a pension worth 100 per cent of their average career earnings which then increases in line with inflation throughout their retirement. And of course, they get the state pension on top.

The best case for a worker fortunate enough to be in a defined benefit scheme in the private sector, says Mr Ralfe, would be to work for 40 years.

Under a typical one sixtieth scheme, this would entitle them to a pension income equivalent to two thirds of their final salary. So not 100 per cent, albeit final salary rather than career average based. And no automatic entitlement to their retirement income being inflation proofed. They would, however, get a state pension.

Mr Ralfe's conclusion? Public sector pensions remain too generous and too costly.

'I've been screaming about this deep unfairness for years,' he told me yesterday. 'It's creating a massive tax liability which future generations will have to bear unless someone in government is brave enough to tackle it.'

He's dead right. Sadly, I would bet my life on it not happening under Ms Reeves' watch. 

• Do you think it's time for an overhaul of public sector pensions? Email me at: [email protected]

Flight change can cause misery 

A change to a scheduled flight time can get your holiday off to a miserable start.

Sometimes it results in the loss of a day's holiday, an overnight stay in an airport hotel, or costly fees to rebook the flight at a more suitable time. And unless the timings have changed significantly, there's very little you can do.

Has this happened to you?

If the answer is yes, please drop my colleague Lucy Evans an email at: [email protected]