March 18th 2006 marked 'National Pensions Day' in the United Kingdom, did you miss it?

The day was marked by the Government running satellite-linked events in 6 major cities across Britain to get the views of a cross-section of the population on the crucial aspects of the pensions' reform debate.

Events were held in Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Swansea, Newcastle and London.

"This is a crucial time in the pensions debate as we work towards developing a long term solution to meet the pensions challenge that we face. We want to engage with as many people as possible - with employers, industry and members of the public both young and old. That is why we are holding the National Pensions Day," the Government's Pensions Reform Minister John Hutton said during the nationwide hook up.

The day saw key issues being discussed and voted upon by the public. These included raising the state retirement age to help fund a more generous state pension, and automatically enrolling new employees into low-cost pensions savings schemes to encourage more people to save towards their retirement.

The event took place ahead the Government publishing its much vaunted White Paper on pensions, which is due to be released over the coming months. This paper will confirm how the Government will attempt to fix the deepening pensions crisis in the UK.

The paper will set out which of the recent Pensions Commission proposals the Government will adopt and which of their own making they will look to introduce.

Obtaining the views of the public on such an important matter must be applauded for obvious reasons, many saw the exercise as a mere public relations exercise by the Government with the results unlikely to be employed if they don't support what the Government already plans to do.

The truth is that these are some of those famous "tough decisions" that need to be made in order to solve the pensions' crisis.

Many fear that the exercise will be used to justify the Government into not making some of the big changes that are required most of which involve major u-turns in current Government policy on pensions and the further reputation damage that will result.

It's all too easy to ask loaded questions, and for the Government to play clever games with getting support for current Government policy - for example its huge emphasis on complex, expensive and ineffective means-testing rather than a more generous pension for all funded by an older retirement age.

The Government would be taking the road of least resistance if it is merely seeking "ardent public support" for the current system, because it sounds fairer and better when the reality, as we've seen, is the complete opposite.

This line of defence for the Government and their nine year track record on pensions is very important for them as pensions experts all over the country, most of the pensions industry, the opposition parties and think tanks across the political spectrum are remarkably united in believing current Government policy is wrong and doomed to even bigger failures if not turned around quite radically.

Whatever the backroom plotting, why not contribute your voice to the debate? Yes, National Pensions Day is now over, but you can still be heard. The Government has set up a website where you can leave your views and have your say. All you have to do is go to www.dwp.gov.uk/debate and tell Messrs Hutton, Blair and Brown what YOU think about pensions..

The Government? Insurance companies? Or independent Trustees?

The Government is close to introducing a new second tier pension system in the United Kingdom to supplement the existing state pension structure, with the new structure likely to reflect the proposals recently put forward by Lord Turner's Pensions Commission.

The changes to the UK pensions system will represent an important part of the Government's further efforts to encourage more people to save towards their own retirement, and reduce the strain of them having to relying solely on the state.

All employers that don't currently offer a decent company pension scheme will have to make one of the new schemes available to their employees. More importantly, all new employees will be automatically enrolled into a scheme - unless they chose to opt out. All those that stay in will benefit from a 3 per cent of salary contribution that their employer will be compelled by Government to pay in.

These new pensions will be very low cost, at around a 0.3 per cent administration fee – meaning less than a third of 1 per cent will be taken off the value of worker's pension funds each year.

This new reform should go a long way towards ensuring younger generations who are working will be encouraged to start saving for their retirement. This may seem strange to someone who is 18 or 21 - but the truth is that starting this early can make an astonishing difference to how much a comfortable retirement costs in monthly contributions.

Lord Turner, who came up with the idea, has proposed that this new pension – which he calls the National Pensions Savings Scheme (NPSS) – should be set up and run by the Government as a single, colossal new pension. However, the Government has offered the chance for others to propose alternative approaches to how the NPSS or something like it is to be set up and run.

Ideas had to be with the Government by the end of February, and three major industry bodies have duly created and submitted proposed alternatives; the Association of British Insurers (ABI), The Investment Management Association (IMA) and the National Association of Pensions Funds (NAPF).

The ABI's proposed alternative, called Partnership Pensions, builds most directly on the current personal pensions industry. In essence, it takes the NPSS idea and funnels the money into slightly modified existing group personal pensions, with some Stakeholder Pension-type promises of easier and free transfers from one scheme to another. It also leaves investment choice to individuals – giving them a choice of a range of funds and investment approaches to choose between.

So far the ABI proposals have been attacked by the Consumers Association, among others, for being too expensive (much more expensive than Turner's recommended charge level) and no real improvement on existing pensions offered by the industry.

Meanwhile the NAPF's proposals are also an attempt to build on existing pensions, but this time successful company pension schemes run by Trustees required by tough laws to operate the scheme in the best interests of its members.

Before the last election, the UK Government asked Lord Adair Turner - former Director General of the CBI - to conduct a thorough investigation into what was needed to address the growing pensions' crisis in the UK.

Some said it was just "Yes Minister" style delaying tactics to postpone a proper debate about the pensions crisis until after the General Election was won.

Cynics said full and frank discussion before the election would have raised too many thorny issues about the Government's record on pensions. A more generous view would be that with the crisis being as significant as it is, a more thorough and independent review was necessary.

Whatever the reasoning, Turner has now reported back and much discussion has followed the full airing of the Commission's proposals.

His key recommendations can be summarised as follows:

1. Gradually increase the basic state pension so that the current rise in 'means-testing' is reversed.

2. Base eligibility on residence in the UK, rather than on the National Insurance contributions you have paid, making it fairer for women, carers and others with an interrupted work record.

3. Gradually reduce the significance of the so-called Second State Pension – the extra state pension layer on top of the basic state pension that used to be called SERPS.

4. Launch a new National Pensions Savings Scheme (NPSS) to become the way that most people on modest incomes save for additional retirement income on top of the state pension. It will be run by the state, and all new employees will be automatically enrolled, but can opt out if they want. Employers must contribute 3 per cent of the employee's salary, the employees' contribution and tax relief will add another 1 per cent. The scheme will operate with very low charges.

5. The state pension age should gradually rise in line with the longer lives we are leading and become more flexible so you can take your state pension earlier or later.

6. Measures should be put in place to help people to work longer.

The big question now is how many of these recommendations the Government will adopt and how many will they reject. Much of the debate right now is focused on the NPSS, but many believe that this is a diversion from the more central issue – the need for the state pension itself to be overhauled.

It is this reform - easily the most crucial to solving the pensions crisis - that the Government will be keenest to duck because it will be an admission that their pension strategy up to now has been completely wrong. Sadly, the fact that 'Prime Minister in waiting' Gordon Brown was the chief architect of that strategy makes this much-needed reform even less likely to happen.

The financial services industry waits with baited breath as the two latest heavyweight contenders in the long running wrestling match that has been the pensions' debate enter the ring - Lord Adair Turner and Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The past has seen a succession of pensions ministers give it a go, going toe-to-toe with pensions experts, the industry, think tanks and consumer groups over what shape reform should take.

The results of these earlier bouts have been interesting in that they have seen various approaches tried, but with limited if any success. These include the Government's 'big idea', the Stakeholder Pension, and Gordon Brown's increasingly Heath Robinson tangle of complexity in state pensions, focused heavily on means testing.

The earlier debates have been quite intellectually productive, in that there is now a reasonable consensus amongst all involved – with the notable exception of Gordon Brown – about the broad direction in which pensions' reform needs to go.

The consensus view is that the state pensions system needs urgent redesign because it is unfair (especially to women), expensive to run, impenetrably complicated, and with its fixation on means testing, it discourages far too wide a slice of the population from saving for their own retirement on top of the state pension.

This agreement was pretty clear even before the recent election. However, the Government managed to postpone any real debate about it by having the Pensions Commission review the whole thing and report back after the election.

Well, it just has, and Government-appointed chairman, Adair Turner, spent much of his recent days being interviewed on the radio, television and by the press about his conclusions and recommendations.

Not surprisingly, he reached very similar views to everyone else who had been trying to solve the pensions' crisis, bar Brown. He did not go as far as some experts believe we should go in moving to a radically simpler state pension and almost a complete lack of means testing. But he certainly did reach the firm conclusion that Gordon Brown's strategy was not working and needed a radical overhaul.

He proposed a gradual shift to a higher state pension age to take some account of the big changes that have occurred to our longevity over the years. In return for this, he advocates a higher basic state pension for all, with the more generous link to earnings restored.

Turner also proposed a new 'Britsaver' pension saving plan. All new employees would be automatically enrolled into this new, centralised, very low cost scheme, with employers compelled to contribute unless the employee chooses to opt out of the scheme.

But even before the opening bell had sounded, the main event had kicked off.

The week before Turner was scheduled to publish the Commission's work, Gordon Brown's team were briefing the press against it, claiming it would be too costly.

Once Turner was in the ring, he quickly fought back and has since proved that these claims by the Treasury are quite unfounded. Most people have assumed that the Treasury's pre-emptive attack was driven by a desire to trash the Commission's findings because they so categorically and convincingly called the Chancellor's state pensions strategy into question.

So it's the end of round one. Turner is ahead on points and has the majority of the crowd on his side. But of course the Chancellor is the reigning champion. And although he risks getting booed out of the ring, he could simply ignore Turner's recommendations.

Despite the fact that the pensions' debate has been raging for many years now, this main event will in fact be quite brief – three rounds at most. The Government has promised firm proposals as to what they are going to do, whether in line with the Commission's recommendations or not, by later this spring.

There is still time to place your bets…