If you work for a private company and are still in a final-salary pension scheme, you can consider yourself very lucky. If you are still in the same position in ten years, it will be almost a miracle. There is probably more chance of Gordon Brown still being Prime Minster than final-salary schemes existing outside the public sector in 2019, if the results of a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey published this week are anything to go by.

The accountancy firm questioned 1,000 blue chip companies and found that 96 per cent believe that final-salary pensions are simply unsustainable.

This is hardly a surprise. The Government’s decision in the Budget to make the highest earners pay tax on their employers’ contributions to their pensions, as well as their own, undermined what little incentive there was for senior executives to maintain expensive defined-benefit schemes. While this rule change, which will cost high earners an extra £10,000 a year on average, may affect only a relatively small number of people, they are very influential people and the decision will clearly hasten the demise of many schemes.

But while the Government’s tax plans have hardly helped, it would be wrong to place all the blame for the demise of final-salary pensions on the Labour Party. In fact, it was the Tories’ decision in 1995 to limit pension fund surpluses to no more than 5 per cent that probably did most to undermine the long-term viability of these schemes. This decision, which was designed to stop businesses from shielding profits in pension schemes, encouraged companies to take contribution holidays. If these surpluses had not been wound down, there might have been enough funds available to ride out the stock market’s dismal run over the past ten years.

Perhaps a bigger problem, however, is the inherent structural defects of final-salary schemes — and that is something we cannot blame on either political party. Too many companies made promises to their workers that turned out to be unaffordable over the long term, particularly with life expectancy rising as it has. While some companies could, in theory, afford their liabilities, it is questionable whether others, such as Royal Mail, will ever make enough profit to fund their schemes.

Of course, that is not to excuse the Government’s conduct over pensions. There is, for example, much that could be done to lessen the growing burden of final-salary schemes in the public sector — starting with changes to MPs’ pensions, which act as a roadblock to wider reform.

Whatever the reasons for the demise of final-salary schemes in the private sector, there is little the Government could, or should, do to reverse the trend. From now on the main political focus should be to encourage people to save more for retirement, whatever type of pension they may have.

Ministers must therefore address urgently the means-testing problem that threatens to undermine personal accounts, the Government’s new money-purchase scheme that all employees without existing pension provisions will be enrolled in automatically from 2012. The scheme is designed to help to alleviate poverty in old age, but means-tested retirement benefits, such as the pension credit, make saving into a personal account effectively pointless for the lowest-paid workers.

Both political parties should also commit in their election manifestos not to reduce further the threshold at which higher-rate taxpayers stop benefiting from full tax relief on pension contributions.

It is possible to avoid a future where the elderly live in poverty, but it is going to take a great deal of political will to make it a reality.

Given the depression hanging over pensions, it is no wonder that more people are taking control of their retirement savings through Sipps (self-invested personal pensions).

These tax wrappers allow greater investment choice than a conventional pension, with Sipp holders able to invest in commercial property or even fine wine, for example. But this flexibility comes at a price. Sipps generally cost more to run, with a set-up fee and annual management charge. Sadly, as with much of the investment world, the full range of charges is not always as clear as it could or should be.

Many Sipp providers, including the biggest, James Hay, supplement their fees by taking a slice off the interest paid to customers on their cash holdings. With an average of about 15 per cent to 20 per cent of a Sipp being held in cash at any one time, the cost of this can soon add up, particularly for savers who have a large cash element to their portfolio.

If you are thinking of taking out a Sipp, it is imperative not only to read the small print (as the details are often buried) but also to work out which charging structure suits the size of your portfolio. Some companies do not take a cut of the interest, though they tend to have higher annual fees.

It is a shame that pension savers have to be so vigilant. The Financial Services Authority must now follow the good work that it has done this week by effectively banning commission payment for financial advisers by insisting that Sipp charges are also made more transparent.