TalkinPeace you are swallowing a lot of badly written bollocks, I'm sorry. There is little explanation of how those figures have been reached in any of those articles.
Yes, people have been hit with hidden charges historically (a lot related to adviser commission), but the regulations governing what an insurance company must disclose in quotes and after sales materials is about a mile long. And the OFT are launching a survey - erm, there is about to be massive reform, I'd damn well hope they are assessing how well the industry can cope with it.
Yes, there are cheaper pensions running abroad on the face of it but to say that people should therefore opt to not have pensions in this country is seriously misguided.
And your initial posts said costs were 3% were returns were 2% - implying you'd get less back than was paid in purely as a result of fees. Fees will reduce your return, yes. But that is to an extent the price you pay for having access to the tax free wrapper provided by a pension, plus the employer contributions (where relevant.) The combination of the two means that, when comparing similar investments most people will do better from being in the pension than out of it.
No investment is free from charges. They just declare it in different ways.