JIM McSheffrey (Letters, April 29) disputes my assertions on local government pension scheme combined deficits but as usual, the devil is in the detail (Letters, April 28).

Do Strathclyde’s gross assets of £15 billion cover 100 per cent of its already-accrued or committed liabilities, as fully-funded money-purchase schemes do? Fife’s reported deficit is £835 million.

In late 2014, the CEO of London Pensions Fund Authority proposed more collaboration to eradicate the “combined £47 billion deficit” of the UK’s 101 schemes. Another expert, academic and former banker Michael Johnson, referred then to “taxpayers’ exposure to an expanding £47 billion black hole” saying they were “Ponzi schemes in the making”.

Finally, for many employees in broadly the same job for many years, their inflation-adjusted career-average pay is not much less than their final salaries, as Baroness Ros Altman pointed out before becoming the Pensions Minister.

John Birkett,

12 Horseleys Park, St Andrews.