Government plans to review auto-enrolment and the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) could severely rock the boat in terms of workplace pensions reforms, warns the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The TUC has issued this word of caution in its submission to the Government review of workplace pensions.

The organisation is concerned that the new coalition government could risk breaking the delicate cross-party consensus over pensions reforms, based on recommendations of the Turner Commission in 2005 and other groups representing unions, consumers, employers and pensions bodies, which have held together for five years.

Instead the submission advocates the planned review of NEST in 2017 as being a better opportunity to assess its effectiveness, as it will have allowed enough time for the new pensions system to have settled in.

“Whilst any new government should closely examine the introduction of a major reform of workplace pensions, major changes now risk undermining the whole package before it has even started,” explained Kay Carberry, assistant general at the TUC.

“While no group is 100 per cent happy with NEST, a careful cross-party consensus has been forged over the last five years.

“The new workplace pensions are simply too important to fail. With two out of three private sector workers no longer getting any employer support for building up a pension, a failure to introduce NEST now will condemn another generation of low and median earners to poverty in retirement and complete on the state in old age.”

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