Ruston Smith, the outgoing chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds, used his valedictory address to the organisation’s annual conference to warn of a “pensions implosion” if the government proceeds with radical plans to overhaul the taxation of retirement savings in the UK.

The NAPF has backed previous rounds of reform such as Chancellor George Osborne's "pensions freedoms" introduced earlier this year, or the plan to auto-enrol 10 million workers into retirement plans that began in 2011 and are still ongoing. However, it has come out firmly against Osborne's latest proposal.