Though funding costs are high, there is ample demand at the long end of the market. The FT reports.

Indeed, the first plea of Joanne Segars, the NAPF chief executive in its pre-Budget submission was to ask that borrowing be tilted to the long end of the market where it can do the most to alleviate funding woes for pensions. Already, government issuance of 20-, 30- and 50-year debt has risen sharply. In the fiscal year ending April 2010, issuance of conventional long-dated gilts soared to £33.9bn from £23.4bn just two years earlier. Thirty-year yields have risen, too, from 4.09 per cent at September 30 2009 to 4.52 per cent as at March 31 2010

.