Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has warned that any future changes to the current plans for pensions reform would damage retirement savings in the UK.

In a thinly veiled attack on the Conservative party's rumoured plans to review the Personal Accounts scheme should it be elected next year, Cooper argued at the National Association of Pension Funds' (NAPF) annual conference in Manchester that it was vital that the current consensus on reform was not pulled apart.

"We have worked hard to build a consensus around the Turner report and this has given us a chance to introduce the most radical reforms seen for generations," she said. "It is more important than ever to build on this and not cherry pick what is in place already."

Cooper also criticised shadow Chancellor George Osbourne's recent proposal to bring forward the raising of the state retirement age to 66 by ten years to 2016: "I don't think it's fair to make people in their fifties - with retirement plans already in place - work for another year.

"We've got to have a continued debate (on the Default Retirement Age), but we need to keep to the framework we are working in, not introduce last minute changes," she added.

She also defended the pensions credit and means testing, telling delegates at the conference that the credit system had lifted "one million pensioners out of poverty".

The Government did have plans to reduce the number of people reliant on the pensions credit, she continued, but that did not mean that "the existence of a safety net (was) a reason to jump from the high wire".

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