The government’s two flagship policies — levelling up and net zero — require the same thing: oodles of private investment in infrastructure. Ministers think that the key to unlocking big dollops of cash will be consolidation of the UK’s highly fragmented pension schemes. They may well be right — although not in quite the way they imagine.

One thing is not in dispute: the very large number of small pension schemes is a problem, for both beneficiaries and the UK economy as a whole. There are more than 5,000 defined benefit schemes, the vast majority of which are closed to new members, with an average of less than £300m of assets each. There is a very strong correlation between size and performance, partly due to simple economies of scale but also the ability of larger schemes to invest in higher performing asset classes such as infrastructure.