The National Association of Pension Funds is demanding that taxpayers guarantee the Pension Protection Fund, the lifeboat scheme for final salary schemes. These are the gold-plated pension schemes that few people outside the public sector have access to any more. As a priority for taxpayer largesse, they look a long way back in the queue.

PPF member schemes have an aggregate deficit of £195 billion. The lifeboat is already creaking at the seams and likely to have to mount many more rescues as company failures rise.

But raising PPF fees, even if it means more schemes closing, looks a lesser evil than expecting overstretched taxpayers to risk a penny more. Public sympathy should be reserved for the majority now paying into inferior defined contribution schemes, who are entirely at the mercy of the financial markets.

If the NAPF wants to sound off about anything, it should be about the trillions of pounds of value destruction at the hands of irresponsible bankers and neglectful regulators, destruction that will probably lead to a poorer old age for millions of people.

Yet, unlike its fellow lobby group the Association of British Insurers, which also represents institutional investors and occasionally tries to nudge companies into better behaviour, the NAPF has been silent to the point of spinelessness.

It has never really represented pension fund members. In fact, a large chunk of its fees comes from fund managers and consultants, the very beasts whose often parasitical behaviour reduces retirement incomes by as much as 40 per cent, according to one estimate.

Pension fund members desperately need their own voice. But the NAPF is not the one to provide it.

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