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Pensions Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is right that longevity has increased faster among the best-off in our society. None the less, longevity has improved substantially among all classes in all areas over the past 20 or 30 years, so it is reasonable overall that the pension age should go up. I do not believe that the right way to deal with widening inequalities in our society is to fiddle about with differential pension retirement ages. The right way to do it is by effective tax and economic and social policies to help poorer people and to narrow the inequalities. I am sorry to have to say to the noble Baronesses, Lady Turner and Lady Dean, with whom I agree on many things, that in practice there could not be a differential retirement age for people in just the building trade. Obviously, there would be all sorts of people not doing manual jobs, so it would have to be for bricklayers and not for others. I am afraid that the problems of inequality and longevity in our society need to be addressed at the core, not by fiddling around with pension retirement ages.