Pensions expert Alan Pickering was asked by the government to devise ways of overcoming the UK's pensions challenges. BBC News Online examines his findings.

Oh Lordy. Another pensions review?

Afraid so.

While Labour was quick, after it was elected in 1997, to seize upon the welfare problems presented by an ageing population, its first initiatives focused on private pension provision.

So, for instance, stakeholder pensions were introduced in a drive to persuade low earners - or those without a salary - to put something by for their old age, and help plug the �27bn ($41.7bn) gap between what Britons need to save for comfortable retirements, and what is actually being invested.

What the government had little realised was that the company pension sector was itself neither as robust nor as reliable as had been thought.

The number of firms closing their final salary schemes - which pay in retirement a guaranteed proportion of a former employee's earnings - has in particular prompted concern.

So in September the government ordered pensions expert Alan Pickering to look at the wider challenges facing the sector, and to suggest solutions.

And what has he found?

The key theme running through Mr Pickering's 98-page report is that the UK's pensions regime is too complicated.

The "simple concept" of saving for old age has been made "extremely complicated", the report begins.

Whether it be occupational, stakeholder or private, "a pension is a pension is a pension", Mr Pickering says. Repeatedly.

Yet the sector is surrounded by a degree of confusion which has acted as a deterrent to saving.

"Potential savers are put off by complexity," the report says.

Companies, meanwhile, have been put off by large amounts of regulation, which Mr Pickering wants to ease.

Easing regulation? I thought after the Maxwell scandal we needed more of it

Mr Pickering does not dispute the need for protecting workers' rights, and indeed proposes a new, more pro-active watchdog to regulate the sector.

What he condemns is the haphazard way the regulations have evolved.

The result has been a system that is "complex and burdensome" to employers.

"Over the years, with each new pensions regime, more and more requirements have been placed on employers," the report says.

"Excessive burdens have been placed on employers, of a funding and administrative nature."

So what does Mr Pickering propose?

The recurring theme of Mr Pickering's solution to pensions problems is "less prescription, more pension".

Less prescription - company pension schemes should be freed from obligations to boost rewards in line with inflation, and payout, after death, to a claimant's widow or widower.

More pension - firms would be allowed to force staff to join the company scheme.

Eh? From an employee's point of view, that sound distinctly like "more prescription, less pension".

Quite.

Roger Lyons, general secretary of the union Amicus said: "Removing the obligation on employers to increase pension benefits with prices would inevitably lead to pensioner poverty in the long-term."

But Mr Pickering's view is that the onus for saving has switched too far from individuals towards employers, with the result that firms are becoming increasingly unwilling to provide schemes and play their part in filling Britain's savings gap.

Through reducing red tape, Mr Pickering hopes to revive firms' enthusiasm for company pensions.

And savers would see less prescription too, through, for example, the development of simpler products, which would be easier to purchase.

Current compliance measures followed when taking out a plan "has developed into an expensive process which eats up a disproportionate amount of time and money", the report says.

"The cost of this compliance weighs particularly heavily on low value sales, to the extent that some potential customers have been priced out of the advice process altogether."

In other words the poor, those of greatest concern, are being largely ignored in pensions advice.

So what now?

Mr Pickering's findings will be considered by the government before it produces yet another consultation paper on pensions this autumn.

This should in turn herald further legislation on the issue.

In the meantime, companies have another pensions problem to deal with - the falling stock markets which have left assets in deficit by, in BT's case, an estimated �1.8bn.