Newsquest is the least communicative newspaper publisher in Britain. Its senior executives always refuse to speak to the press about the company's affairs.

In so doing, Newsquest leaves itself open to criticism even when it may well have a reasonable case to argue.

The latest example of its anti-PR policy has been highlighted by journalism blogger Jon Slattery, who gave specific examples of Newsquest's stonewalling tactics following a revelation by the National Union of Journalists that it is to end its final salary pension scheme.

Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford was particularly frustrated by not reaching Newsquest's chief executive Paul Davidson to discuss the story.

In his blog posting on the failure to get any kind of response, he wrote:

This is the UK's second biggest regional newspaper publisher, which employs more than 5,000 people. It would not expect its own journalists to accept such a response if they were investigating one of the companies they report on.

Slattery also cites two other rebuffed approaches, one from holdthefrontpage and the other from journalism.co.uk.

In both cases, no-one at Newsquest was available for comment. They never are. A person answers the phone and says a message will be passed on. Then nothing happens. They do not even get back to say: "No comment."

It has been the case for years, so it must be company policy (though Newsquest's US parent, Gannett, is slightly more forthcoming).

In fairness, Newsquest doesn't seem to care what is reported, clearly adopting the line: "never explain, never complain."

For a newspaper publisher, though, it is a poor way of going about its business and it's part of the reason that its own journalistic employees are so unhappy. They hear nothing but criticism.

On the pensions story, for example, they are not able to read a public explanation that - in my opinion - would surely justify the company's rational commercial decision. (Final salary pension schemes have been vanishing across the newspaper industry and elsewhere for perfectly understandable reasons).

Not that this will change Newsquest's mind. I could, of course, have contacted the publisher for a comment on this matter, but what would be the point?

PS: A reader - a business journalist - emails to agree that Newsquest are "a pain" to deal with, but points out that the Express group is also devoid of pubic relations skills.

He writes: "You get passed around hundreds of people who seem to have no idea what press office, communications team or PR mean."

What? Richard Desmond unhelpful? Well, as my old Blackburn landlady was fond of saying in mock surprise, I'll go to the foot of our stairs.

Instead of being dismayed at people working longer, we should think of imaginative ways to use their skills

The announcement that employers will no longer be able to get rid of you just because you have reached 65 is supposed to be good news; and if it means that people can't be forced to retire against their will, it probably is. It's arguable, of course, that it is less hurtful to be told: "Well, you've had a good innings; accept this tasteful clock; it comes to us all," than it is to be shoved out because they can't stand you any longer.

But more and more people are wanting to work longer, especially if their pensions aren't up to much. Sacking people these days is mostly subject to certain formal safeguards, so this may be hailed as an important milestone on the long march towards an older pensionable age generally. After all, the very first old age pension in 1908 started at 70 and that is certainly the way we're headed; good news for those who like their jobs, glum for some cleaning drains or screaming at teenagers.

The economic case for raising the pension age is pretty well undeniable. It's entirely a matter of population: there simply won't be enough people working and paying taxes to finance the pensions of the tiresomely long-lived aged. Immigration of families with lots of children, it seems, will help a bit, but a newspaper that suggested emigration to control the population was crazy, since it's the young, not the old, who chance a new life overseas. And those who say: "We've paid our taxes and insurance all our lives. We've paid for it," are, alas, wrong. What they've paid is only a small fraction of what they're going to cost.

The main worry about the old codgers working longer is that it will keep hopeful youngsters out of their jobs. This has something in it, but less so in our short-contract culture than when workers progressed predictably up the company ladder until old Joe retired. It assumes, too, that there's a finite number of jobs out there. It's like the fallacious trade union remark about paying off useless workers 30 years ago: "My son will say, 'Where's my job, Dad?' and I'll have to say, 'I sold your job, lad.'" But presumably people working longer will make jobs as well as occupy them – they'll buy more goods that have to be manufactured, pay for services with their salaries; and in fact I believe that the commercial start-ups of older people actually have a better survival rate than those of the young hopefuls.

It is going to come. It is inevitable. The question is, what we can make of it – maybe it won't be all bad. I'm biased, of course, still working 20 years after pension age, but I think we may be moving towards a different way of looking at the various ages of man.

Usually we think of three chunks: there's the first stage from baby to fully fledged worker; then there's the main working life, which includes raising children, and finally the third bit, slowing down, past it, decline and final exit.

It may be that we should be thinking of four ages: growing up, then the first chunk of working life – presumably the one using the most physical energy. Then a third, possibly in a quite different field. This might involve what Denis Healey called the hinterland: in his case it was farming, but hundreds of people already move to a different version of their working life. Cooks get out of the hot kitchens and help run restaurants, civil servants become non-executive directors, teachers become advisers, fathers stop climbing the scaffolding and take over the building firm's accounts and anyone who has done anything interesting tries to write a book about it. My husband, thriller writer Gavin Lyall, used testily to wonder: "Why does everyone who's tired of their own career try to relapse into mine?"

Or people could go into politics. Time was when MPs had usually done something else first: the old trade unionists had worked in factories, the businessmen had run firms; when Ann Widdecombe went into parliament she expressed herself humbled (yes, really) by being in the presence of distinguished surgeons and lawyers. But nowadays political hopefuls often start by getting work in the Commons library or being an intern to a minister – as a friend put it, "getting lifts in the ministerial car instead of suffering public transport like the rest of us". Far too many of them have never actually run anything. But if we accepted that politics should be something you came to a bit later in life, it might even take care of the problem women have with combining parliament with children – though persuading the men that running a family was valuable experience would, I suppose, be another matter. But the life pattern followed by, say, Jill McIvor, a trained lawyer who stayed at home to raise a family but in her forties became a first-class ombudsman for Northern Ireland, might become a norm.

Only after that, in the fourth age, would people need to start thinking of themselves as seriously old. What's more, this fourth age could itself be a source of much better employment than it is at the moment. Baroness Julia Neuberger's manifesto for the old envisages proper careers for those catering to the needs of the really old – not just for a few geriatricians, but for the currently underpaid and undervalued army of carers and comforters, the people who feed, wash, amuse older people. And indeed design for them – why has no one yet taken up Barry Cryer's idea for a high-speed stairlift that gets you up to the next floor before you've forgotten why you wanted to go?

The late great Alan Coren used to wonder whether those who advertised machines as "foolproof" kept a fool or two about the place to test them; I often wish those who make gadgets with tiny instructions in pale grey print, or allegedly labour-saving appliances, or clothes meant to suit the mature figure would keep a few elderly advisers around to try things out. It could be a good new career for, say, the businessman who has never had to handle such a thing in his life before – he would be invaluable.

The academic world has a useful category of dons who make way for the next professor, but are obviously not past it in any serious sense: they become professor emeritus. When a distinguished editor of the Sunday Times ceased to be so, he was given the title of editor emeritus, and when asked what it was, he said he wasn't sure but it meant that he kept the car.

Maybe the emeritus generation won't get to keep a really swanky car; maybe the fact that we still know how to double-declutch won't command a high degree of respect. But at least so many more useful years, informed with the bruises and insights of a long life, won't have to be wasted.

For as ethicist Richard Nicholson observed a quarter of a century ago: "A 30-year sabbatical is just not on."

Catherine Bennett is away

Debt pushes Premier Foods to rethink its long-standing pension promise to 17,000 workforce

Premier Foods chief executive Robert Schofield, a long-standing supporter of final salary pensions, has finally bowed to investor pressure and told pension trustees and unions he wants to ditch the group's gold-plated retirement scheme for its 17,000-strong workforce to help reduce the group's considerable debt.

Premier, which manufactures under brands including Hovis, Mr Kipling, Quorn and Sharwood's, has been one of the last FTSE 350 firms to keep open a final salary scheme despite group debt running at 4.5 times its top-line operating profit.

In 2007 Schofield vowed to keep the scheme open to new members "as long as possible". Asked todaywhy he had not made the move sooner, he said: "Because I am a bloody socialist, that's why."

Premier has a handful of pension schemes with total assets of about £2.5bn. According to the latest accounts, the schemes showed a combined funding deficit of £431m – equivalent to 91% of the group's value on the stock market. Given its debt burden, Premier management has already secured concessions from pension trustees over how speedily the deficit must be repaired. It is committed to pay in £40m a year up to 2014. Further payments are capped at least until 2022.

However, in the coming months the company and pension trustees will receive a triennial valuation for the deficit, as at April 2010, carried out on a stricter, actuarial measure of assets and liabilities.

This could show a considerably worse funding hole compared with the last triennial valuation, conducted in April 2007. Since then, despite what is believed to have been a relatively conservative investment strategy, rock bottom government bond rates and slumping equities are likely to have widened the funding gap.

The biggest shortfall is expected in the £2bn pension scheme relating to RHM. This scheme was already showing an actuarial deficit of £226m, just weeks after the RHM flour and Hovis bread business was acquired by Premier three years ago.

Pensions expert John Ralfe said: "Premier has got to be on the pension regulator's 'to watch' list."

This deal was the last in a string of debt-financed acquisitions which fuelled Premier's roaring growth after it listed on the stock exchange in 2004. Other deals brought in well-known grocery brands such as Quorn, Oxo, Batchelors, Paxo, Bisto and Golden Shred.

Since then, however, debt concerns have seen the group's share price collapse by more than 90%. Last year it launched a £400m rights issue to pay down debt. It still retains £1.37bn of debt but plans to generate £100m of free cash a year to reduce borrowings.

Moves to reduce costs and uncertainty from Premier's pension scheme funding gap came as the group yesterday reported a half-year pre-tax loss of £54m on sales of £1.18bn. Analysts at City broker Evolution Securities said: "Debt remains too high. In order to generate £100m of cash in 2010 Premier are reliant on working capital benefits but delivering these when input costs start surging will be much more difficult."

The UK's 200 largest companies have a pensions shortfall of £100bn and the downturn is likely to make deficits worse

The coalition's move to abolish the default retirement age of 65 is a step in the right direction, but simply allowing people to work longer will not solve the pensions crisis, either for individuals or for companies. Neither will the piecemeal measures announced so far, including the downgrading of inflation-proofing of benefits in line with consumer price inflation, which tends to run at a lower rate than the previous benchmark, retail price inflation.

The UK's 200 largest companies have a combined pensions shortfall of £100bn, according to Aon Consulting. In the short term, the economic downturn is likely to make the deficits even worse, due to technical factors related to the market in government debt. Companies are pinning their hopes on long-term recovery to reduce the red ink, but the deficits in themselves may be impeding economic revival. A study by the CBI and actuary Watson Wyatt found that a third of employers believe the need for additional pension provision had "significantly obstructed" mergers and acquisitions, or led to reduced competitiveness. Almost 40% claimed the pension fund had drained away money that would otherwise have been used for business investment.

Allowing employees to carry on into their late sixties and beyond is a sensible move. Those who want to continue should not be subjected to age discrimination, and older workers should increase productivity in the economy as a whole. If mature employees carry on working, they contribute to the economy and to the exchequer. Any blocking of opportunities for younger colleagues may be offset by the fact they are reducing the burden of elder support.

None of this, though, is a magic bullet for businesses grappling with final salary pension schemes. There is already a trend for companies to close them to new entrants and to scale down benefits, but that does not deal with their existing obligations, which in some cases amount to more than the market value of the company itself. Allowing people to work for longer doesn't cut costs: the length of time they draw a pension will be shorter, but it will be at a higher level.

In the past few weeks, there have been a number of rows about pensions. BT is battling regulator Ofcom, which has banned it from raising the prices it charges rivals to help plug its £6.6bn deficit. Workers at an AstraZeneca drug factory are holding a strike ballot over plans by the company to freeze pensionable pay for its final salary scheme in a bid to tackle its deficit of £1.4bn. Uniq, which makes sandwiches and salads for M&S, had a plan to pay off its £436m deficit rejected by the pension regulator.

There will be more of these conflicts as companies seek to bring their pension liabilities under control, not only with employees and regulators, but also with shareholders. Despite the overall weakness of the UK economy, some large companies are seeing profits flow again. Dividends are being raised at British American Tabacco, BAE, Centrica, BskyB and Rolls-Royce, and AstraZeneca has increased its share buyback programme.

Questions will be asked about why investors are benefiting from the cash generation ahead of fund members, though this is complex. The largest shareholders in the UK are in fact pension funds, so depriving them of dividend income seems self-defeating.

Companies have some difficult judgments to make: on extra pension contributions versus dividends, and on ploughing money into the fund versus investing in the business. Some will behave cynically, and some funds will be impossible to save. The Pensions Regulator reports an increase in potential avoidance activity, and 160 schemes have gone into the lifeboat scheme provided by the Pension Protection Fund.

Most people, understandably, prefer not to think too hard about their retirement finances. The credit crunch has put us in fear for our jobs and the value of our homes – pensions are just one more worry. There is only one message, and it is not an easy one for politicians to deliver: work longer, save more and spend less, supposing you are fortunate enough to be able to do so.