Hoping for the best but planning for the worst is not a bad approach for any government. In respect to pension’s policy it is now imperative.

Let us hope it never happens. But the likelihood is that, sooner rather than later, one of the big pension schemes will simply shut up shop. That is a fate of which all too many contributors have had first hand experiences. ASW workers are a case in point.

But so far the team leaders have held off on such a move. Yet many companies are trading with pension deficits worth more than half of the value that the stock market places on the entire company. A wonderful conspiracy of silence on the matter reigns. No one has yet said that the king has no clothes – or rather, won’t be able to meet his pension liabilities.

So far so good. But the silence won’t last. At some stage a chief executive of a mega company will call it a day and wind-up the company’s pension scheme, in order to ensure the company’s survival. At that point, a whole bevy of companies will run for cover in the same direction.

Before that day dawns it is imperative that the Government has in place a universal lifeboat operation. An insurance scheme must be up and running and, because of the vulnerability of so many pension schemes, this insurance cover needs to be universal.

How to establish such a scheme is detailed in one of the clauses of the Pensions Winding-Up Bill I have introduced, and which is up for debate on 20th June. If the Government wanted to give even a hint that it was serious about protecting future pensions, it will find parliamentary time for the bill.

Likewise, the Opposition could get serious. It ought to move itself beyond merely shedding crocodile tears on behalf of pensioners, about to be stripped of their most valuable asset. It could give over one of its days, when it decides what parliament discusses, to a Second Reading of the Pensions Winding-Up Bill.

Establishing a national scheme of pension insurance within six months of the Bill becoming law must be buttressed by two supporting measures. The first is to give this scheme borrowing powers. Once pension closure gets seriously underway, an insurance scheme will be plunged quickly into deficit.

The Government does not have to draw on rocket science to pick up the form of that borrowing requirement. The unemployment scheme had such powers in the inter-war period. As employment picked up in the 1930s the scheme was on course to repay the Treasury the loans it had raised on its behalf.

The National Pensions Insurance Scheme should be boosted by a second move. The financial sector holds over £15bn of unclaimed assets. These are separate sums from Orphan Assets, which now underpin the balance sheets of most of the big insurance companies. Transferring these unclaimed assets to the new Insurance Scheme would give it a most generous and important dowry.

The move would cost taxpayers nothing. Establishing the scheme with such a dowry would help settle voters’ fears about their future pension entitlements. It would also help limit the size of the insurance levy.

The labour movement has grown old in the tooth telling us that pensions are deferred pay. I have always believed that. Any insurance levy should therefore be placed on those who would benefit most from insurance cover, i.e. the membership.

It should not be levied on employers, although to call for such a move is no doubt popular. Why should those employers who are funding their schemes adequately pay an additional sum for those employers who, aided and abetted by governments, ran down their pension surpluses?

The insurance scheme should cover 90 per cent of a pension promise and employee contributions should be based on the size of the pension already earned. A member of 40 years standing would be insuring a much greater pension asset than a co-worker who had made only 5 years’ contributions.

The first move in a new pension strategy must be the passing of the Pensions Winding-Up Bill. And that needs to have occurred before the first of what is likely to be a whole series of catastrophic company pension scheme wind-ups.