Government's proposed pension changes would create an exception for Tata Steel
There are plenty of buyers keen on parts of Tata's UK steel business - but none are remotely interested in its final salary pension scheme.
Little wonder, really. There are 130,000 members of the old British Steel scheme. Most are retired and the scheme is in deficit to tune of £450 million.
Tata has said it won't sell unless the scheme is taken off its hands, so the government has a problem.
On Thursday, the government will propose amending the law to allow the trustees of the scheme to link future benefits to CPI rather than RPI - a less generous rate of inflation.
This will leave steelworkers worse off in retirement - over time their pensions will buy less than they would otherwise have done - but not as worse off as they would have been had the scheme ended up in the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
All other schemes that are deemed unsustainable end up in the PPF. It's the normal process when an employee is no longer in a position to support the promises made to members.
The government appears to be creating an exception just for Tata. This is only a consultation and if enough people complain it may not happen.
There are likely to be complaints, not least as it doesn't seem remotely fair.
The 23,000 members of the BHS final salary scheme have recently been told they will have to accept significantly less generous benefits in return for membership of the PPF. Why should steelworkers be treated more generously?
This is a wider problem that gets very little attention - partly because pensions are such a complex issue, partly because it's politically tricky.
Some 11 million people in Britain are members of a final salary pension scheme. Collectively those schemes are £800 billion in deficit. In the past, some companies made promises to their staff about the income they can expect in retirement that now look unaffordable.