Where next for UK pensions policy?

About 20 percent of those schemes have already closed, while 70 percent of finance people polled by Hewitt are more likely to consider doing that now.

“FDs in the audience have a legitimate right to do the same thing – as long as it is for the right reason,” she said.

Michael Johnson, former secretary to the Conservatives’ economic competitiveness policy group who joined the panel, said the Nest changes were “fundamentally flawed and will see FDs at greater pains to make ends meet”. Most people who save in Nest will get “derisory pensions”, he said.

Public sector
Johnson also echoed Wesbroom’s concerns about the burden of public sector pensions on the rest of the business community. Five years ago the gap between employee contributions and pensions in payment was £200m.

“In 2010, it is expected to be 24 times that, or £4.8bn,” Johnson said. “That is plugged automatically by the Treasury. What was a self-contained system within the public sector has broken down.

“Of more concern is that the public sector will contract at the same time as the number of pensioners rises. This means a reduction in contributions and an increase in outgoings.”

But cutting back public sector pensions will create its own problems, according to public finance accountants. In 2008-09, public servants contributed more than £8bn to their pension schemes, a sum which was effectively used to pay the pensions of today’s public sector pensioners.

Johnson called for pensioners’ asset pots to be transferred to beneficiaries without any inheritance tax, which would encourage people to start paying into a pension.

“We need to start tiptoeing away from what is essentially an unfunded public sector pensions world to a funded one,” he said. “That will take 50 or 60 years, but we need to make a start.”

Read the Chancellor’s decisions on pensions here