I ask Steve Webb, minister of state for pensions, if he's happy with the current state of British pensions and his eyes glaze over. He shuffles backwards in his chair and manages an uncomfortable smile, further stalling with a wry chuckle that says it all. The words that follow are fair but don't answer the question.
"We're turning this tank around," he insists. "At the point where I took over pensions they'd been in decline for 40 years, but now things are starting to head in the right direction."
This is a bold but bona-fide statement. Webb is doing some good work and he genuinely cares about pensions. He wants to talk about how auto-enrolment, the new government policy introduced last year, will provide 10m pension-less Brits with retirement savings they wouldn't have otherwise had. And how he's got anti-fraud agencies out in force clamping down on pension liberation schemes that con savers by helping them get at their money early. But he doesn't really seem to like talking about how his policies will affect middle England and the wealthy.
We really want to know whether we can rely on the state pension retaining its value, so we can make a financial plan for retirement.
But, in the true spirit of pensions, Webb refrains from giving simple answers. He starts by saying the state pension won't go "down". And he assures it will stay broadly linked to earnings. But the confusion kicks in with a "but". It won't go up "as fast" because he's reducing the overall cost of the system. So could this, in real terms, mean a stingier state pension could creep up on all of us? Quite possibly - is the general industry consensus.
Some people refer to Webb as the "Robin Hood" of pensions, but he casually shrugs this nickname off. He explains: "What I'm doing is taking the same pot of money, spending less on means-testing and more on the state pension. In the long run the pensions bill will still go up, but not as fast as it would have done."
He's not keen to spell out, in simple terms, who will get less as a result of the new state pension. Deciphering the winners and losers isn't easy, but Webb does admit that if you're paying a "flat" pension instead of an "earnings related" one over the long term, the people who would have got bigger earnings-related pensions will get the flat-rate pension instead and will therefore lose out.
He says the new state pension was delayed because politicians took longer than expected to crunch the numbers, so when he recently decided to bring its implementation forward to 2016, he was actually hauling it back on track with his original plan.
He said it will also benefit the 85,000 women born after April 1953 who had their state pension age changed twice, as well as 350,000 men born after 1951. Webb is no miracle worker but he is very passionate about improving the state of British pensions. He knows one of the things you want most is to feel secure about your pension, so he is trying to instil strong flavours of safety into his policies. "We're not just tinkering - we're trying to achieve consensus, and our core pensions architecture is here to stay," he says.
He refutes claims that his latest plans to place guarantees on savers having decent pots at the end of defined contribution pensions could "suffocate" returns through high charges, but admits any guarantee has to "come at a price". But he doesn't appear to have any concrete evidence this is a policy that savers even want - because he doesn't appear to have actually asked them.
Mr Webb is fully aware the public disapprove of his "gold-plated and diamond encrusted" pension, though. To his credit, he does have a fierce record for speaking out against MPs' pensions being unfair, having consistently voted against the deal they currently have. But when pushed for a figure on how much these cushy pensions are costing taxpayers, many of which he admits "probably don't realise how bad their pensions are", he ramps up the wriggling, and I quickly realise he's either keeping the numbers under wraps or he simply doesn't have them.
One thing he does let us in on is the fact MPs' pensions are set to take a major bashing from Ipsa, the independent body now responsible for MPs’ pensions, which is expected to come out with some "tough" changes and fundamental reforms in coming months.
And he also confirmed parents with kids struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder will not be allowed to dig into their pension funds to help out, as Nick Clegg suggested last year. The idea of using retirement funds to fund first-time homes was well and truly bashed on the head after it was met with a swathe of criticism. Instead, the new 'Help to Buy' scheme announced in the Budget last month means parents' pensions are off the hook and the taxpayer will instead foot the bill for first-time buyers who can't afford to stump up a deposit, as the government is now willing to dish out loans worth up to 20 per cent of deposits under £600,000.
The extent to which Mr Webb's policies take from the rich and give to the poor remains unclear. But what is obvious, is that the wealthy are low priority in the government's freshest pension policies. And this mentality is filtering down to the way workplace schemes are invested. Default funds are cautiously invested because most ordinary people with a pension have a low-risk appetite. But are many overly cautious? "It's difficult to say," he says, adding National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) research found people are very risk averse when new to pensions and therefore need cautious funds.
For those employed in the public sector Mr Webb reckons you're likely not to know how good your pension is. But if you're a private sector worker, he thinks you probably don't know how bad your pension is.
"Even after the changes we've made, public sector pensions are still some of the best pensions in the land, and many people in the private sector don't have good enough schemes - but we are working on this," he says.
If you were looking for reassurance that the pensions minister is doing his best to make sure British pensions are on the mend, a chat with Steve Webb will do just that. But if you were looking for some comfort the new UK pensions policies are going to make you better off in retirement, you might not sleep so well tonight.
