LABOUR’S Frank Field is undoubtedly correct that tripling the fines that can be imposed by The Pensions Regulator (TPR) would make bosses think twice about messing about with their employees’ pensions.

And the work and pensions committee’s recommendation that the watchdog should be more proactive, intervening in pension schemes that are being starved of funds before they risk collapse, is a welcome acknowledgement that public intervention in the market is often essential to protect working people from daylight robbery by the 1 per cent.

It is to be hoped that these deliberations do not meet the usual fate of backbench committee musings — a day’s headlines but no meaningful reform.

Sadly the government remains in the pocket of the same crooked tycoons who are milking this country and its working people dry — in this case Sir Philip Green, but much the same could be said of the entire private equity “industry,” not to mention other sectors like privatised transport.

And the problems exposed by the debacle at BHS, where the £571 million pension fund deficit prompted the committee to propose harsher penalties for the likes of Green, are bigger than a lack of adequate regulation.

Green’s 15-year ownership of the once ubiquitous British high street chain was essentially an asset-stripping exercise — having purchased the formerly healthy company, he had it pay out staggering and entirely unsustainable dividends to his Monaco-resident wife.

Trying not to fold despite this haemorrhage of capital was, as we discovered last year, an ultimately futile exercise and in the end Green flogged the business — which still employed 11,000 people at the time — for a single pound. But it was an exercise that meant cutting corners while it lasted, which is why payments to the pension fund were not kept up and why 20,000 fund members have been left high and dry.

Socialists have always argued that the interests of working people, whose labour creates wealth, are not the same as the interests of the business owners who employ them and whose profits depend on appropriating as much of that wealth as possible.

A footloose global elite who stash their loot pirate-style on desert islands has even less in common with the vast majority who work to survive.

It hardly matters to Sir Philip if a proud institution crashes, its staff are left jobless and our high streets left poorer because of his chronic mismanagement; he can pat himself on the back, having made hundreds of millions from the process, and move on to the next victim.

The same warped logic has a vice-like grip on our whole economy — creating what Communication Workers Union (CWU) leader Dave Ward has called “the British disease.”

A fixation on the bottom line rather than the long-term health of the institutions and services that keep our society’s wheels turning is evident in the reckless closure of high street post offices which has forced CWU members to walk out on strike this week.

It’s visible too in the shuttering of ticket offices across the Tube network and the attempts by operators like Southern and Merseytravel to axe train guards — policies evaluated simply as to whether they cut costs, without any thought being given to the safety or quality of service provided on the networks involved.

At its most simple, the problem is one of production for profit rather than production for use. We can all support tougher penalties for pension-pinchers such as Green.

But stopping our country being sold down the river for a quick buck will mean a more radical restructuring of the way our economy works.