There is barely an employer in the country whose defined benefit pension scheme has not swung violently into the red in the past year or two.

Investment returns have been diabolical. Share values collapsed last year by 30 per cent. Commercial property — office blocks and shops — slumped in value. Hedge funds, in which the BBC fund has been dabbling, proved far from damage-proof.

Liabilities have been rocketing because of soaring life expectancy. Bluntly, former BBC personnel have not been dying as early as the fund’s actuaries predicted that they would.

The ensuing shortfall will be eye-catching — perhaps £2 billion on one measure — but no worse than the pension deficits of many of the private sector’s biggest companies.

BT alone has a £4 billion shortfall. British Airways’s is £1.7 billion. All deficits added together currently amount to £205 billion, according to the Pension Protection Fund, the industry lifeboat.

The difference with the private sector lies in how the BBC has responded. Almost all defined benefit schemes in the private sector have been closed to new members in the past ten years. The BBC’s scheme is still open, though since 2006 it has been watered down, with new members clocking up benefits linked to their career average salary, not their final salary.

About £8 of the £142.50 licence fee goes towards ensuring the BBC can honour past and present pension promises. That proportion looks certain to rise. The BBC has agreed to set aside additional contributions to the fund, the trustees say, and these may have to rise further once the next formal fund valuation takes place.

Like the Royal Mail’s pension fund —which faces a much more severe deficit — neither is explicitly guaranteed by the Government. Both rely upon the financial strength, the so-called covenant, of the employer.

That is no longer reassuring enough for the BBC pension trustees, who reveal that they are now discussing demanding a claim over BBC assets — presumably the corporation’s property or programme rights.

That in effect would amount to part-privatisation — but privatisation where the proceeds go not to taxpayers, but to current and former BBC staff.

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