SIR Malcolm Rifkind, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, will today attack the Government’s “leisurely” progress on dealing with the pensions crisis and its “unhealthy” dependence on means-testing retirement benefits.

Speaking at a summit of pensions experts organised by the Government, Sir Malcolm will urge David Blunkett, the Work and Pensions Secretary, to speed up efforts to find a solution to the problems in retirement savings. In particular, he will say, ministers need to address the problem with women’s pensions.

The state pension is based on national insurance contributions, which means that women, who work less in order to raise children, form the majority of the poorest pensioners. Sir Malcolm will also say that any shake-up in the system must be entirely new and not simply superimpose new policies on the current “creaking structure”.

The pensions summit has been organised by the Government to enable potential solutions to the pensions crisis to be aired with key stakeholders and industry experts. The summit will be hosted by the Pensions Commission — led by Adair Turner, the former CBI president — which has been appointed by the Government to look at ways of reforming the pensions system.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrats’ work and pensions spokesman, will call for a reduction in complexity and means testing and will suggest a system in which workers must actively remove themselves from their company scheme.

Ros Altmann, who advises the Treasury and Downing Street on pensions policy, will echo Mr Rifkind’s concerns about women’s pensions. She will call for the Government to recognise how women’s roles in society have changed and to adapt the system accordingly.

“We need to focus on women’s pensions. The vast majority of women who are not in the labour force are not holding tea parties. They are doing something socially useful,” she will say. “We cannot ask them to do that and then penalise them in their pensions for doing so.”

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