The UK’s biggest listed companies have cut contributions to their defined benefit pensions schemes by 10pc since the financial crisis but ramped up shareholder payouts by 140pc in the same period, according to new research, raising fresh fears of "short-termist" management at British blue chips.

The figures come in the wake of a demand by The Pensions Regulator (TPR) that weak companies stop handing cash to shareholders while they struggle to fill holes in their pension schemes.

Scrutiny of corporate pension deficits has intensified in the wake of the collapse of retailer BHS in 2016, which had a £571m hole in its scheme, forcing TPR to protect the pensions of 19,000 people.

Construction giant Carillion, which collapsed last year, had pension schemes with 28,500 members with final salary pensions.

Over the past decade, FTSE 100 companies paid about £82bn into their defined benefit (DB) schemes - schemes that pay pensioners a set amount irrespective of the performance of the fund - but delivered almost eight times that amount (£636bn) to shareholders in the form of net dividends and share buybacks.

The findings are from an analysis of annual reports of carried out by Barnett Waddingham, a pensions and risk consultancy.

“This analysis has very uncomfortable echoes of the situation at Carillion, where directors held the pension schemes in contempt, instead stripping whatever cash they could out of the business to hand to themselves and big shareholders," said Frank Field MP, chair of the Work and Pensions select committee.