Philip Webster, Political Editor of The Times, tells Times Online how the Turner report on pensions reform has gone down in Westminster:

"If Turner hoped that his report on pensions would be accepted verbatim, he can think again. The report is being treated in Westminster as the start of the national debate on pensions, rather than the answer to the problem.

"The Government is going to respond fairly quickly, in the Spring, but that clearly won't be its definitive response, it will be just the start.

"That said, politicians on all sides in the Commons have recognised and welcomed the Turner report as a good analysis of the issues facing the country, and all agreed that it showed that the Government has to act sooner rather than later to prevent a crisis in future years.

"The main differerence between the Government and the Conservatives is over whether we need to act now. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, for the Conservatives, suggested that the report showed that there was already a crisis, because of the very substantial drop in saving for private pensions. But the Government quoted from the report to show that Lord Turner actually says that there is no crisis yet.

"The argument within the Government will now hinge on how much the Turner proposals can be afforded. It was noticeable that, sitting alongside John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, was the heavyweight presence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"We know that Gordon Brown has privately raised doubts about the whole Turner report, and reading it today it's easy to see why Brown doesn't like it. It amounts to a clear rejection of the way that he has been prepared to deal with pensions over the past eight years of the Labour Government, which is to relieve pension poverty through the use of means-tested pensions credits.

"Turner argues for reducing means-testing, because means-testing is proving to be a deterrent for saving. Why would you bother to save if it disqualifies you for pensions credits, that people who have never saved a penny for their old age are entitled to?

"As predicted, Lord Turner is proposing the index-linking of the state pension from 2010, linking it to earnings rather than prices. This means that the value of the basic state pension will start to go up.

"But he goes significantly further, also suggesting tentatively that when people reach the age of 75 the state pension should be universal, based on residency rather than on contributions. That represents a huge boost for women, many of whom can be expected to live well past that age. At present most retired women have much smaller pensions than men, as their working lives were interrupted to have children.

"What was quite noticeable was how Tony Blair responded to the Turner report in the House: he praised the way that the Government, ie Gordon Brown, had dealt with the pensions problem until now, but he agreed with Turner that in the future it had to be simplified, and had to be based on a more generous state pension. There was quite a large nod for it from Blair.

"We know what Mr Brown thinks, from the various leaks: he has huge doubts about linking the pensions to earnings. That has never been Labour policy and he thinks it does not help in the targeted way he prefers. But nobody was publicly knocking the report today, and even Brown himself is not knocking it. He's saying that it has to be used as the basis for cross-party consensus in 2020 and 2030 and 2050 - and who knows which party will be in power then?

"The Turner report doesn't involve any immediate costs for the taxpayer, but if the state pension is linked to earnings from 2010 that would involve a significantly larger input from taxes. So far the Government has not committed itself to implementing any of it - nothing is ruled in or out.

"Gordon Brown's objections to it are both political and economic. He doesn't like commissions coming up with solutions for problems that the Government should be solving, unless, of course, they happen to go along with his own thinking. He is saying that it's not up to the commission to make the decisions, it's their job to show us the problem, and in that sense the Turner report has definitely provided some fertile ground for debate."

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