Cash: Not enough being saved for retirement

A former pensions minister has warned that the government still lacks a strategy to deal with the savings crisis.

Speaking on Sunday former welfare reform minister Frank Field said Tony Blair was still failing to get to grips with a key election issue.

And he predicted that the general election could become a "grey election" because of the focus on retirement provision.

Following last week's pensions commission report it is feared that the majority of under 25s are failing to save enough for their retirement.

The report suggested that 12 million under 25s faced a future of poverty unless they rectified their pension provision.

Amid predictions that today's generation of workers could be forced to work until they are 70 or older, Field called on Blair to address the pensions crisis.

He said ministers still lacked a central strategy to make people save more for their retirement.

No strategy

"At the end of the day the government is actually where it was before the pensions commission reported except it's now reported and said we've got to do something," he told GMTV's Sunday Programme.

"It has to actually make a political choice and I don't believe the government can go into the election without actually saying what it is going to do.

"The Tories have set out what they are going to do with state pensions. The Liberals have said what they are going to do.

"I think it is inconceivable the government can now say we are waiting for this commission to report after the election so that 10 years after being elected we might tell you what we are going to do on pensions. It won't rub."

Denial

Speaking last week the prime minister, however, denied that the government was guilty of inaction on pensions.

"It is not correct that we are doing nothing for people currently in work who will be pensioners," he told MPs.

"There is the state second pension, which is helping millions of low-paid people to build up a second pension; there is the pension protection fund, including the £400 million that is being paid out to those who have lost their pensions; and there is the Pensions Bill.

"We are doing a whole series of things, and we will do more once we get the final recommendations of the Turner commission."