Lord Turner has become persuasive in his role as saviour of British pensions in a way he never was as plain Adair Turner running the CBI.

He has even persuaded Gordon Brown, it is claimed, to fudge his veto on any link between the state pension and earnings.

Lord Turner's latest coup is to talk round the Financial Services Authority, scourge of any insurance company or financial adviser it catches without the systems to make certain its customers get advice tailored to their personal circumstances.

This doesn't suit Lord Turner because if charges on his National Pensions Savings Scheme are to be 0.3 per cent, as he proposes, there is no money to pay for individual advice.

This should be anathema to the FSA. It rarely hesitates to wield a sledgehammer if it finds someone failing to "know your customer".

Selling an admirable financial product to somebody who cannot afford it or under-estimates its risks is mis-selling and no nonsense.

Yet yesterday the Treasury Select Committee witnessed figures from this bare-toothed watchdog nodding meekly along with Lord Turner's basic proposition that every employee in the country should be recruited automat-ically into his NPSS without any regulated advice at all - provided the thing is kept simple. Simplicity, though, is not the issue. It is suitability.

According to Lord Turner, even if Mr Brown accepts in full Lord Turner's earnings link for the state pension - so far dismissed by the Chancellor as "unaffordable" - 30 per cent of all pensioners will still qualify for a meanstested top-up. That is, they stand to lose some, or all, of it if they save up for a pension of their own.

That is only ten per cent fewer than now. And if Mr Brown and future Chancellors keep the system as it is the proportion will rise to 75 per cent. Those are Lord Turner's sums.

You have to conclude that between three-tenths and three-quarters of the employees who will be hustled into his scheme - unless they take the initiative to object - will need individual advice on whether and to what extent their savings are likely to cost them state benefits they would otherwise receive.

The FSA's Clive Briault is amply aware of the issue. He told the committee "Obviously, the greater the impact of means-testing the more concerned we would be about it".

Still it might be possible for people to make their decision on the basis of a clear information leaflet without personal advice at all.

Even with means testing, "for the vast majority of employees, it would still make sense to save", Mr Briault insisted. He cannot possibly know.

Apart from the "market risk" - the basis of compensation for most home-buyers winning redress for a mis-sold mortgage endowment - nobody can sensibly guess what income any given pension pot will buy in ten years' time, let alone in the 2040s. It will depend on interest rates and how long people are living.

Don't conclude from all this that Mr Briault is a rogue - only that persuasive Lord T urner is winning his argument.