State pensions proposals ‘discriminate against low-paid workers’

24 March 2017

Former CBI Chief John Cridland has recommended that the government increase the state pension age (SPA) to 68 between 2037 and 2039, attracting criticism from the National Pensioners’ Convention (NPC).

The report, which was published yesterday, pushes the existing timescale for increases in the retirement age forward by seven years.

If the government went ahead with Cridland’s proposals, the higher pension age would affect workers currently aged 45 or younger, and the NPC warned this could hit the lowest paid workers the hardest.

“Raising the SPA inevitably has the greatest impact on those with shorter life expectancies, often in lower paid jobs, doing manual or stressful work, in poorer health and in the more deprived areas of the country,” the organisation said.

“Not everyone will be able to continue working up to SPA through ill health and some will find themselves out of work before they reach SPA and unable to get another job in the meantime,” they added.

“A fairer alternative would be to base retirement policy around the number of years of healthy life expectancy. Despite lots of evidence in the report to support this, it does not appear in the recommendations,” the NPC pointed out.