Comment by Age Concern

RAISING STATE PENSION AGE WOULD STEAL THE RETIREMENT OF MILLIONS, SAYS AGE CONCERN

Ahead of next month's Green Paper, Age Concern is today warning that any move to raise the basic state pension age will directly penalise millions of lower earning workers who are already likely to have worked the longest and have the hardest jobs.

Recommendations to increase the age at which people become eligible for the state retirement pension have been persistent over recent weeks, with the latest reports coming from the Pensions Policy Institute and the National Association of Pension Funds*. All suggest an increase from age 65 to 67 or 70 to help pay towards our pensions system.

Age Concern believes that a hike in the basic state pension age would serve as a final blow to those older workers who may do physically harder manual jobs and cannot afford early retirement. These people are likely to have left school at 15 or 16 to go to work, have the worst health, the lowest life expectancy** at retirement, and have paid national insurance contributions for longer. An increase in the basic state pension age would literally steal away a larger proportion of these people's time in retirement.

We welcome the debate on pensions, believing that retirement ages should still be looked at, but only in terms of promoting a more flexible retirement where people have the choice to either carry on working longer or retire when they reach 65. Also, one third of people aged between 50 and state pension age are currently not working, often for reasons such as age discrimination or lack of suitable work. Rather than force people to wait longer for their state pension the priority is to provide more opportunities and tackle obstacles such as age discrimination, and to enable more flexible retirement.

In any case proposals to increase the basic state pension age should not be based on fears of sustainability as no such problem exists, with the UK's expenditure on pensions as a share of GDP projected to remain broadly at its current level of around 5 per cent *** -  a figure much lower than in most EU countries.

Gordon Lishman, Age Concern England's Director-General, said:

"Raising the eligibility age for pensioners in the future would disproportionately hurt those with the lowest incomes, physically hardest jobs, fewer opportunities and lower life expectancy in retirement.           

"We must bring an end to this debate before millions of our poorest labour-force are left to bear the brunt. Instead we should look at the real issues of providing a decent pension for all with more choice and flexibility around retirement

ENDS