Government failure responsible for pensions meltdown

He said: "No minister has been in the job long enough to get to grips with the brief. Defined contribution schemes are unsuitable for low earners and yet that is the direction government is pushing us with personal accounts. Why is there no encouragement of good workplace schemes? It is very sad to see what has happened to workplace schemes in this country."

Waddingham said successive legislative changes – such as compulsory pensions increases and the abolition of tax relief on dividends – effectively priced defined benefit schemes out of the market.

He said: "Be in no doubt, it was regulation that killed the British pension scheme. It isn’t feasible to go back to what we had before but you can still provide DB schemes with 5pc from the employee and 10pc from the employer budget. If only the government would say ‘this is a good thing’.

"The government has continually refused to help fill the very wide space between DB and DC. There is nothing in the Pensions Bill that does anything like this."

Waddingham said he backs the campaign to allow conditional indexation championed by the ACA.

"The government has said it does not have anything against it, it just needs to think about it. But we are not giving up on getting it in the Bill – the Lords will be asked to re-instate the amendment to clause five," he said

"We need encouragement now otherwise there will be no alternative to DC in 2012."