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Raising of the Pension Age

Yes, but we need to be reasonable. However, there is broad acceptance. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said that there had not been much debate or controversy about the original changes in the rules. I do not have a problem with the idea, nor do my constituents or society at large, that the pension age will gradually rise. The question is how we are to deal with the wider range of ages. Although the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) was right to say that there has always been a range of ages, without going into the statistics it seems to me that that range is getting wider. At the top end, many people are living into their 90s and even beyond 100, yet the increase at the bottom end seems not to be as great. I stand to be corrected on the statistics, but whatever they are, we are dealing with a wide range.