A couple of months ago more than 600 pensioners from Lister-Petter plc, an important diesel engineering firm in the Stroud constituency, received the devastating news that their company pension would fold.

This will result in those continuing employees receiving only a tenth of the pension that they expected and have worked for all their adult life.

This brings the current so-called pensions crisis into sharp focus.  Now in terms of the disaster that has be-fallen the Lister-Petter pensioners hope may be at hand.

Under proposals to provide pension protection, future generations will be helped and the government plans to offer help retrospectively.

Of course there is much more to the position facing pensions and pensioners.  So much so that this group have achieved a high salience in terms of the potential political significance of their voting intentions at the next general election. 

Starting with what to do with the state pension there are a whole number of questions that will have to be answered in order to earn the votes of the older population.

Somewhat bizarrely the Tories have announced recently that they will re-tie the basic state pension to earnings, an arrangement that they broke in 1980.  As someone who has always supported the link this marks an important step.

However if this is to be at the cost of help to the poorest pensions in terms of the minimum income guarantee or poorer pensioners now significantly benefiting from pension credit then this will be a reprehensible change. 

Quite simply there can be no more evil than failing to provide sufficient resource for those who do not have other forms of income besides what the state provides.

This can be made worse by an expenditure squeeze on those on low or fixed incomes which is why the council tax debate is also causing so many ripples.  This is why the government has looked to try to stem the tax revolt by the £100 payment to the over-70s.

In addition there remain specific scandals that are as yet far from resolved including Equitable Life, which will impact upon the pensionability of individuals, coming as it does hot on the back of pensions mis-selling.

Allied to the problems that I started with, this has done enormous damage to confidence in the industry and gives every reason why the younger generation are not being persuaded to set aside for their later years, even if at current projections they may be alive for at least 20 years after they finish work.

Notwithstanding the obvious need to get individuals to take more responsibility to supplement their state pension there is a real requirement for government to get its policy mix on pensions right so that it satisfies not just today’s pensioners but tomorrow’s as well.

David Drew is Labour MP for Stroud