The new �personal accounts� for pension saving at work will have �a powerful impact on people�s lives�, the chairman of the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority, Paul Myners, said in Edinburgh yesterday.

The new "personal accounts" for pension saving at work will have "a powerful impact on people's lives", the chairman of the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority, Paul Myners, said in Edinburgh yesterday.

Myners, the former Marks & Spencer chairman appointed to the job by Gordon Brown, faced formal Conservative calls for his resignation recently after calling Tory leader David Cameron a "superior young toff" who had never had a proper job, on BBC's Question Time programme.

Yesterday at the investment conference of the National Association of Pension Funds he praised the work of a parliamentary committee "of first-class people led for the Conservatives by Nigel Waterston and the LibDems by Danny Alexander".

Asked afterwards whether he was reacting to the criticism, Myners said: "Not at all. That (on TV) was a bit of banter. I have been asked back to Question Time so it can't have been that much of a disaster."

Myners said the proposal by Lord Turner's Pensions Commission for auto-enrolment into a savings account at work was the "shining light" of pension reform. On whether the minimum 8% contribution (4% from the individual, 3% from the employer, 1% from government) into personal accounts from 2012 was high enough, he said: "All I can say is 8% is a lot better than nothing."

On fears that means-tested retirement benefits will wipe out the incentive for lower earners to save at all, Myners said it would only affect "some at the margin" and "a small minority".

He added later: "That uncertainty exists with existing schemes, this isn't something which has suddenly arisen as a result of personal accounts."

However, Myners admitted that if even 1% of what could be seven million account holders were affected, that would still be 70,000 people pointlessly saving.

Steve Bee at Scottish Life said: "Those auto-enrolled into pension saving can stand to lose 40% (or more) of the value of such savings if they are one of the four in 10 people at work today who are expected to be in receipt of means-tested hand-outs when retired."

Myners said that transparency and accountability would be a hallmark of the delivery authority, which following another pensions bill this year will become an executive authority, and insisted: "We will operate in a commercial environment in which our role is to complement, not to replace, commercial provision."

But on industry concerns that existing, and superior, pension schemes will face undue obstacles in getting approval to continue operating in the new regime, Myners said shortly: "That is a matter for ministers."

Standard Life has complained that private pension schemes will have to pass a quality test based on an employer's contribution measured as a proportion of an employee's total earnings, whereas the vast majority of schemes use basic earnings as the benchmark.

Andrew Tully, pensions manager at Standard Life, said: "We are getting brushed off on these issues, they are not taking them at all seriously. They say employers will keep on doing this testing, but that is not the point, they are putting lots of people's pensions at stake.

"We shouldn't really be making life difficult for good employers, we should be trying to encourage other employers to put schemes in place, we shouldn't make them jump through loopholes."