The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) has attacked the government’s decision to raise the pensions age in the public sector from 60 to 65.

Speaking today at a joint fringe meeting on the first day of Labour Spring Conference, general secretary Mark Serwotka will accuse the government of seeking confrontation in refusing to negotiate over plans to compulsorily change the public sector pension age.

Charging the government with ‘denying real choices in accessing public services’ Serwotka said:

“If the government are serious about choice then they should look at how you access public services, the channels through which you get advice, make an application or get help.

“Those channels shouldn’t be restricted to call centres and the web, but should be supported by face-to-face interaction. Yet job losses and the resulting office closures on the scale the government are proposing will deny that choice, stripping out services at the heart of many rural and urban communities.”

Serwotka accuses the government of trying to ‘turn water into wine’:

“On the one hand the government talk about choice of delivery in public services but on the other they are denying choice in how you access those services. The government have got to realise you can’t have something for nothing.”