Large cuts to the generosity of public service pensions recently came into force for new entrants. IFS researchers have compared the value of pensions available to public sector workers to those available to their private sector counterparts and examined how this has changed over time. There remains much debate over whether these reforms should have gone further, and the new coalition Government has announced an independent commission to look into this issue. Drawing on past research, IFS Deputy Director Carl Emmerson gave evidence to the ESRC All Party Group of MPs in November 2009.