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Pensions Bill [HL]

My Lords, one cannot help but sympathise with the case put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. I think it is what we would call the plumber’s knees problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is addressing another issue entirely. However, I am concerned about the procedures that would have to be put in place to give effect to the provision. We already have a vast machinery of state tribunals assessing when people do this and when they are entitled to that. If we were to vary the state pension age, through whatever reasonable means, you can bet your bottom dollar that a bureaucracy of tribunals would grow up to implement it, just as we have had now for other areas. Therefore, this needs addressing; certainly what has been called heavy-end caring needs addressing. In the case of the terrible differential between people who work in very physical environments and those who do not, where there is clearly often an age-related difficulty, this does not seem to be the mechanism. If I may, I put in my epidemiologist’s tuppenceworth on the prediction of whether people who live longer have age-related disabilities—or disabilities of long duration, which is worse. The evidence is extremely difficult to predict because it changes from cohort to cohort and has changed during the course of my research life. It is true that disease-free life expectancy is growing dramatically, and so is the number of disability-burdened years, although the rate of disability-burdened years may not be growing very fast. It is extraordinarily difficult to predict, because of the lifestyles now of people aged 40 to 60, what the rate of disease-free life will be in 20 to 30 years. We all want to live longer, and die faster, do we not? What the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said was correct, but the Minister’s response was equally correct. It is extremely difficult to predict. However, on this amdendment, I worry about the bureaucracy that might be put in place to respond to such flexibility, but I recognise that we ought through some mechanism to address the early disability of people to respond to their own employment and that they should have the flexibility to stop and not be impoverished by stopping.