Denham hits out at pension crisis

Mr Denham accused the Treasury of failing to understand the issue and said the Chancellor was wrong to rule out tax increases to fill the gap in funding for retirement.

The shortfall was identified earlier this week by Adair Turner's Pensions Commission.

He said that Treasury initiatives had undermined occupational pensions by making them less attractive for employers to provide.

Mr Denham - a minister in the then Department of Social Security in 1997-98 who quit the government last year in protest at the Iraq war - warned that Labour must not duck the pensions issue in its campaign for the next year's general election.

He said: "The Turner Report is still warm on the press and tax increases have been ruled out by the Chancellor and the Tories are saying we don't need tax increases, we can do it through government savings.

"So one of Adair Turner's key proposals - and actually the one that makes most sense to most people - has already died in the political quicksand."

Mr Denham said he was concerned that Labour would go into the election next year without committing itself to any of the three main options proposed by Mr Turner to solve the pensions crisis - higher tax, later retirement or compulsory savings.

"We would think we were being popular, but in fact nobody would think we were being realistic," he warned.

Mr Denham was scathing about Mr Brown's record on the issue: "The Treasury dominates pensions and doesn't really understand pensions.

"The evidence is in Turner's report that the Treasury has never understood why companies provided occupational pensions.

"The Treasury has always done the sort of things that would reduce the provision of occupational pensions and now we have ended up with a real problem."

Tories seized on Mr Denham's comments as proof of differences over pensions between Mr Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is known to have a high regard for Mr Denham.