THE NEED TO CONSIDER PENSION REFORM

The following was a statement first published in a voice note by the Chairman of the PLP Fred Mitchell on 20 August 2025 on pension reform:

As I was canvassing Fox Hill, and as it often happens, I got an interesting and pleasant surprise. A lady who is retired spoke to me and I asked her if she needed anything. She explained the hassle she anticipated getting the noncontributory pension from National Insurance. I offered to help but she refused. She said she was fine. It was too much paperwork for the amount you would ultimately yet, but she added that in her working life she had anticipated the retirement and took steps to ensure that she was comfortable in her retirement. 

Thanks she said but no thanks. That was a complete change from the usual demands and attitudes of entitlement that you hear around.

We are now reviewing the parliamentary pensions account of each Member of Parliament or Senator, so they will know what the pension will be if they retire today. When I received the figure from the office, I understood what so many people experience upon retirement. If I retired today, I simply could not live off the pension. 

Those in a similar situation then are forced to work, continue to work or become supplicants on public largesse.

When Lynden Pindling, put in place, the pension arrangements for MPs, he argued that it was to improve the lot of the generation of the politicians before him who ended up impecunious as a result of public service. Yet he himself suffered at the end of his life 25 years ago. And you suffer in the face of an unforgiving public.

In my case, it’s no one’s fault that the result is what it is. I made the choices and I stand by those choices. As Perry Christie, likes to say: “it is what it is,” There will be enough to bury me for sure. Cremation, of course. At the end, I think I’ll be okay. And there’ll be enough somehow. 

Why is this an important discussion? From a public policy point of view, it is important because we face a declining birth rate, a low replacement level, older population, the urgency of healthcare issues like dementia and other non-communicable diseases, pension reform to correct a huge burden on the government’s coffers, that is unsustainable and the public education that is required.

Public education should show the public that your finances are your personal obligation, not the government’s obligation primarily. The government is a backstop, not the primary obligant.

This is all the more so because the morals and values of the generation behind us, do not seem to share the Christian notion that you are your brother’s keeper, as they literally dump their loved ones on the public hospital system and abandon them to a death of loneliness.

My late friend Mario Donato of Grand Bahama used to say to me,” Fred, do me a favour? Don’t get old.” He was a rich man, and went to his grave asking that favour. I understand now more than ever what he meant. Let us commit ourselves as a country to planning our futures better. This applies to both young and not so young.