The new work and pensions secretary has pledged to increase the role of trade unions in encouraging saving for retirement.

In his first speech to a Labour Party conference as a Cabinet minister, Alan Johnson said on Monday that employees need to have more confidence in their pensions policies in order for an economic "crisis" to be averted.

While he denied that Britain's savings gap was at that stage yet, he claimed it was a serious "challenge" for all concerned.

The former union leader announced a new fund to "generate more workplace advice by specially trained union representatives" in his keynote speech in Brighton.

He called on employers to provide more understandable information to staff but said unions could help the process too by becoming more involved.

"The voluntary system can work much better where people are properly informed and advised," Johnson said.

"I want to see more companies offering clear, high quality information or automatically enrolling workers into pensions schemes so that individuals do not lose what is effectively part of their pay because of inertia or confusion.

"And I want workers to get advice on pensions as they increasingly do on lifelong learning from a source they can trust - their trade union representative."

Benefits

He also hinted at reforms to Incapacity Benefit designed to get more people into work and reduce the escalating costs of payments being picked up by the government.

And as the head of the Whitehall department with the biggest budget, Johnson said he was looking at ways of cutting running costs and the level of sickness in the public sector.

"We need to change our whole approach so that we focus on what each person can do rather than on what they can't," he argued.

"And as we make work possible we must ensure that it is safe and healthy. Too many people on Incapacity Benefit arrive there directly from the workplace.

"We need to better understand the pressures of work so that employers can do more to avoid sickness and cut absenteeism.

"That's why I'm heading a new taskforce to forge fresh thinking in the public sector. And we're also developing a new approach on occupational health to help prevent illness before it forces people out of work and onto benefits."