Eliminating pensioner poverty was one of William Beveridge's chief objectives, but one the welfare state has still to achieve - and is further away from now than at any time in the past 50 years. While the Woopies (well-off older people) are whooping it up on their occupational pensions, their contemporaries who thought they could rely on the state pension provided by their National Insurance contributions will be counting the cost.

The doom-laden findings of the Pension Provision Group set up by the Social Security Secretary, Harriet

Harman, that by 2025 millions of

people now in work will see a drop of 20%-30% in income when they retire, are not unexpected.

The report coincides with the nationwide Debate of the Age instigated by Age Concern both north and south of the Border in an attempt to jolt the middle-aged and encourage the young to make provision for old age before they are overtaken by life events beyond their control. ''We are trying to get people to understand what it will be like with an ageing population and to engage in the debate of what the Government should do to achieve the kind of society people want,'' said Lucie McKenzie, of Age Concern Scotland, after a morning on the campaign bus in Edinburgh which predictably attracted enormous interest from older people but also an understanding from younger ones of the problems faced by their parents' generation, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is already clear. At present two-thirds of people aged 65 or more have an income too low to pay tax and nearly 40% of pensioner

households rely on means-tested benefits, despite the notorious reluctance of pensioners to apply for benefits they regard as charity.

Lurking at the edges of both this debate on the future of state and occupational pensions and that on social security, is the idea of the stakeholder pension, a term signalling a new partnership between state and private schemes designed to allow the millions of employees, particularly those in part-time and low-paid work, who do not have a second-tier pension in addition to the state one to contribute to one.

The idea of some element of compulsion for people who are in work and who can afford it to save for a pension, is supported by the Consumers' Association, but only if pension schemes are simplified and tailored to give a reasonable return to people who may work on short-term contracts, take career breaks, or whose income fluctuates, said their senior researcher, Philip Telford.

Even that would leave a significant group of people who cannot do that because their income is too low or they have long periods of unemployment or illness, who would still require a basic level of pension in old age.

Tests by the Consumers' Association of 100 personal pensions on offer from financial companies found that only eight met their criteria for a good deal. Mr Telford believes that those eight show that it can be done and that changes in work patterns with more people self-employed and freelancing mean that there is a market for simplified and far more flexible pension packages which the major companies will have to provide.

''We need better-quality pensions, with easier access for people who can afford to save but only a little bit and lower charges. There is a whole raft of Inland Revenue legislation which is designed to stop over-contribution by people using pension contributions to avoid tax, but that affects only 1% of pensions while the real problem is people under-contributing,'' he added.

The devil, as always, is in the detail: in this case at the policy formulating level. ''The ideal pension provision is that which would enable all pensioners to receive an income adequate to enjoying a modest but adequate lifestyle in the course of their retirement,'' according to Age Concern Scotland. They concur with research by the Family Budget Unit that #125 per week for a single pensioner and #205 for a couple (at 1994 prices) is an adequate level of income.

Easier said than done or, as they put it in their submission to the working party: ''Consensus should be reached on guidelines for determining a level of adequate income and the process of uprating the levels of adequate income.'' Much of the disparity between pensioners which forms the present problem and the basis for a future inequality of dimensions which have not been seen since the beginning of the welfare state and are causing tremors in the social policy think tanks, and presumably in both the Department of Social Security and the Treasury, stems from 1980, when its uprating in line with earnings ended. It has been blasted into the public consciousness by the demographic timebomb full of atomic statistics such as: over the next 50 years the number of people over the age of 75 in the UK will double from four million to nearly 8m.

We are all about to discover sooner or later is that welfare to work is but the first step. Moving from work to pension is an obstacle course between private pension schemes, providing more choice, more incentive to contribute, and a beneficial effect on the economy by providing greater funds for investment, and cheaper, simpler state schemes which provide a non-means-tested income in retirement for everyone.