Retirement Age

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, clearly that is the issue: life expectancy is growing rapidly. It is hard to set the figures many decades in advance. The responses to the consultation show that most people think that a period of around 10 years seems appropriate, although other countries have used shorter periods. It is right that we should look at a number of factors when we move the retirement age. These include not just longevity but healthy life expectancy and regional and other variations.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, it is clearly reasonable that the pension age for men and women should rise alongside longevity. However, it is clearly unreasonable that up to half a million women have recently learnt that they will have to wait up to two years longer than they expected for their state retirement pension. The noble Lord will know that many sectors of the House were deeply unhappy about this. The Pensions Bill is now in the other place. Will he tell the House whether the Government are shifting their position on this so that it is fair to all women and not so deeply unfair to so many women?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness pointed out, we debated this in some depth when we looked at the Bill. Those concerns, expressed around the House, were taken very seriously. The Secretary of State responded at Second Reading in another place by saying that we needed,

“to implement the change fairly and manage the transition smoothly”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/11; col. 50.]

We are looking at how best to do that. Should there be legislative changes, they will of course come to this House to be considered in due course.