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Pensions Bill

It may be that we are all eating our own words tonight. The noble Baroness gave an interesting speech, but, given that she seemed to support everything that the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Skelmersdale, said, I did not understand why she would not support them if they pressed the amendment. So be it. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, kindly reminded me of my words four years ago. One of the problems of getting older is that one’s memory is not quite as good as it was. I will go and look at the context of what I said. An imposed limit at age 75 is clearly out of date. It might have been right to impose such a limit in 1976, but it is clearly not right now. We want change. This is a slightly odd grouping because we will come to our amendments—for example, Amendment No. 132—on the same topic later. We prefer the much simpler option of increasing the limit, which was the fourth option mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I well remember standing shoulder to shoulder with the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, fighting for specific increases, but we thought that this time—we have all been round this track a few times—we would say to the Government, ““You say how much life expectancy has increased since the limit was fixed, and that is the amount by which it should now increase””. Given how fast life expectancy is rising, the limit should be reviewed every few years to avoid this problem in the future. Of course, things have changed a great deal since the 1970s. Being 75 in those days was probably characterised by the actors in ““One Foot in the Grave””; for many people now ““Strictly Come Dancing”” would probably be a more accurate representation. However, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that his is the simplest approach. His detailed amendments cover two pages of the Marshalled List, and, I believe, contain a few grey areas. We are strongly in favour of raising the limit, but we would not do it in this way.