The Conservative party has voted against auto-enrolment in the House of Commons in what Nigel Waterson, Conservative Shadow pensions minister, has labelled a "protest" against the Government's "flawed system of implementation".

Commenting on yesterday's vote, Waterson said: "We condemn the Government for attempting to play politics with such an important issue. As Angela Eagle well knows, we fully support auto-enrolment. We are committed to establishing a low cost and straightforward pension saving vehicle for the millions of people that are excluded from the current system.

"We voted against these regulations as a protest at what has been a flawed system of implementation and because the Government is intent on signing contracts to bind the next Government. If we win the election we will review the system to ensure it works effectively and it is wrong for the Government to be making such a review harder."

In response, Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said the vote was a "shocking attack on pension provision for people in work". She reiterated that the reforms have been supported by the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce, and added: "Now we know the Tories want to kick people in the teeth and take that pension promise away."

Angela Eagle, Pensions Minister, continued the political mud-sling by accusing the Tories of throwing their toys out of the pram. "This is breathtaking irresponsibility. The Tories are being disingenuous and hypocritical by talking in favour of the consensus but voting against giving millions of people access to a workplace pension."

Meanwhile, Iain Anderson, director and chief corporate counsel at Cicero Consulting, believes that should the Conservative party come to power with a working majority, they could move to disband the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a claim that has been fiercely denied by a Tory spokesperson.

Anderson said that the Tories' plans for the DWP were not "written in stone", but the possibility of scrapping the DWP was a strong one. He said that the party was thinking of handing over responsibility for pensions to the Treasury, if a new agency was not created in the DWP's place.

The political lobbyist also claimed that Cameron's team was contemplating using Stakeholder schemes instead of NEST to drive up savings in the UK. He said the party was engaged in a debate on whether the setting up of NEST was a justifiable use of public money.

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