Exactly. The Treasury’s justification is that, even though the companies have been privatised, the workers are still deemed by the Office for National Statistics to be on the Treasury books, because of the nature of their work. It is understandable that their work needs to be underwritten by Government, because they are decommissioning nuclear sites and no one can get an insurance policy for that.
That technical, statistical designation, however, does not mean that applying the cap to those workers is fair or that it necessarily represents value for money for taxpayers in the long term. There is no proof that taxpayers will receive any benefit, as the private operators of the companies often receive higher incentive payments in their contracts as a result of this kind of change. Unless the Government decide to act, employees in the sector will note that the Treasury has excluded them from the public sector when it comes to pension provision and other issues, but considers them within the scope of the capped exit payments.