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Generous gold-plated public service payouts will rise by 10.1 percent next April in line with inflation figures published last week – with the multi-billion pound bill picked up by the taxpayer.

At the same time, private sector workers – who have paid for their own pensions – have seen their pots drop by around 20 percent as stock markets have plunged this year, with the value of their retirement income eroded by inflation.

Analysis of Government accounts found a total of £60billion was paid into the pension pots of civil servants, doctors, teachers and MPs in the year to March 2022.

A 10 percent inflation increase means an extra £6billion will be paid next year, although the total cost of the increase for workers yet to retire has been estimated at £19billion.

The bill is picked up by ordinary taxpayers who could only dream of such generous retirement schemes.

Pensions specialist John Ralfe, who uncovered the figures, said: “MPs and civil servants have no inflation risk in the game – their pensions go up however high inflation is.”

“And unlike private sector occupational pensions, public sector annual inflation increases are uncapped.”

“All public sector pension increases should be capped at five per cent like the private sector.”

The disparity has sparked calls for reform of public sector payouts to ensure they are affordable and fair for all taxpayers.

Total public sector pension liabilities now amount to £2.2trillion, according to The TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Just reducing the uplift in public sector pensions in line with the lower increase in average earnings of 5.5 percent would save the taxpayer around £2billion next year.

Critics point out that private com- pany pension savings offer no protection against inflation and have been eaten into by rocketing prices and falling stock markets.

The Government is legally bound to increase former public servants’ retirement incomes in line with September’s inflation figure, which hit a 40-year high.

Taxpayers now face paying as much as £4.5billion to cover the cost of honouring these inflation-proof “defined benefit” pensions next spring, according to estimates from pensions group Canada Life. And over the next 20 years the inflation link will sting taxpayers for around £19billion – even if inflation returns to normal levels by 2024.

The Treasury will have to spend an extra £3billion in pension increases across just four of the largest schemes – the NHS, teachers, the Armed Forces and the Civil Service – according to estimates from the wealth manager RBC Brewin Dolphin.

Connor MacDonald, of the think tank Policy Exchange, said: “As the private sector moves to phase out defined benefit pensions and turns to defined contribution, it is fair to ask if the demands placed on the taxpayer by public sector pensions are sustainable.

“The Government could consider a shift to defined contribution, though this would be a less generous option.

“In any case, there is a strong argument for reform.”

The generosity of public sector pensions used to be compensation for lower salaries.

However, the gap has been narrowing. The average private sector worker earned £622 a week in the year to August, according to analysts IDR.

The average public sector worker, excluding those who worked in finance, earned £593.

Carla Morris, of RBC Brewin Dolphin, said the lack of inflation protection built into private pensions was creating a gap between public and private sector workers’ retirement prospects.

She said: “Private sector workers will have to take on a level of investment risk that previous generations did not have to.”

Former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann warned that the inflation link in public sector pensions was written into law and “cannot be changed just at the whim of a government”.

She said: “It is absolutely vital that all state pensioners who do not have the benefit of a public sector pension should be protected at least as well as those who have both the state pension and their additional public sector pensions.”

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