Older Workers: Job Market Opportunities

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. They have saved the best debate until the end of the day. It has been one of quality and challenge, which is a good thing.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Altmann on securing this debate. She has been a tireless champion for older people, before and after entering this House, and speaks with great knowledge on the area of older workers, resulting in positive action. Her work as Pensions Minister is well known, but before taking up that post, she had already set the agenda for older workers as their first business champion. Her report A New Vision for Older Workers: Retain, Retrain, Recruit laid the groundwork for the Department of Work and Pensions’ 2017 strategy Fuller Working Lives, which we are still delivering through the 50Plus Choices team. I am delighted to respond to her question today and to provide details of the new and continuing work which the Government are undertaking on behalf of this incredibly important group.

To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, I will run out of time. I am sure she will be happy at that point but, where I have not answered a question, I undertake to write to all noble Lords and place a copy in the Library.

As noble Lords have said, older workers are vital to our economy. The proportion of the population aged 50 and over is projected to increase from 42% in 2010 to nearly 50% by 2035, or 29 million people, so it is essential that the Government and employers make every effort to help and encourage this group with enthusiasm, experience and expertise to enter, stay in and return to work.

Firms with fewer older workers are missing out on the improved productivity, which all noble Lords have talked about, generated by social mixing and a transfer of knowledge between generations. When I ran my charity, I was always delighted when we had more mature members of the workforce with experience because when the younger ones were finding their feet and having those junior moments, rather than senior moments, it was great to be able to get the experienced ones to mentor them. I remember so well that some of them got into pretty deep water and the people with life experience helped them out of it. It kept them in the workforce, so I do understand that.

Dismissing older workers as being past it and allowing them to underestimate themselves is not just damaging to the individuals who are denied access to opportunities to grow, develop and earn. These attitudes are also damaging to individual businesses and to our economy—that was a very important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. We know that age diversity in the workforce is not just the right thing to do but that it can bring benefits to business, and many employers value the experience and loyalty that older workers can bring, as well as broader advantages such as fresh perspectives, knowledge-sharing and improved problem solving. I remember so many times when we had difficulties—which I am sure will resonate with some noble Lords—and someone would pipe up to explain what was done 10 years ago, which was really helpful.

I know that the pandemic caused catastrophe to some people’s employment but it has created particular challenges for the over-50s. Older workers took longer to come off furlough than their younger counterparts, and some of those who left have not returned to the labour market at all. Even before the pandemic, job-seeking presented particular challenges for older people. Evidence shows that those in this age group who lose their jobs are at greater risk of becoming long-term unemployed, and once they return to work, they are likely to earn substantially less than in their previous job. Data suggests that people aged over 50 who lose their jobs are twice as likely as other age groups to be unemployed for at least two years, which can mean that older workers are forced into early retirement that they may not want or are unable to afford. That comes to the point that my noble friend Lady Altmann made about people using their pensions to get them through that period.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that I will find that TUC report. We will read it and see what we can learn from it.

The Government’s older workers agenda, which, as I have mentioned, was influenced and informed by my noble friend Lady Altmann, had been making steady progress in addressing these issues. Pre-pandemic employment levels for older workers were at a record high of 10.7 million and the employment gap between over-50s and the 35 to 49 age group was narrower than ever before. However, the pandemic has sadly reversed this positive momentum and we have seen encouraging trends slip into reverse. The Government are watching the data carefully and are determined not to allow this setback to become a backward slide.

Labour market support and demand is there. We have huge numbers of vacancies and I am sure that, around the country, among our more mature population, there are people who could ably fill them. We must help them to believe that and apply for those jobs. That is why I am delighted that the Chancellor announced a £500 million boost for the Plan for Jobs to ensure that more people of all ages, including those aged 50 and over, get tailored Jobcentre Plus support to help them find work and build the skills they need to get into work.

As part of this, the new Way to Work programme will ensure a laser focus on securing work for every customer. It requires us to use every interaction, every employer relationship and all the work provision we have available to help people achieve their potential by finding a job, and in doing so support our country’s recovery.

I know that there was concern that we were going to use that as a sanctions bonanza. Nothing is further from the truth. All the jobcentres that I have visited have welcomed this programme as a real opportunity to provide tailored support to all ages. I can assure noble Lords that nobody is rubbing their hands together saying, “How many sanctions can I do today?” They are saying, “How many people can we get into work today?” The package will provide more intensive, tailored support for older jobseekers in the first nine months of their UC claim. This extra time will allow work coaches to spend longer with customers, developing strategies to overcome any barriers to work that they might be facing.

My noble friend Lord Leicester mentioned employer engagement, which was of course identified in my noble friend’s report in 2015. If we are to help people enter or re-enter the labour market, our relationship with employers is absolutely critical. They are the ones who create jobs and know the skills they want, and we have to be really good at matching them up and supporting people not just to get a job but to stay in it. I always found that getting someone into work was good, but keeping them there was the best.

The Government send this message out loudly and clearly to employers, including through the current business champion for ageing society and older workers—I am sure that we can come up with a better title than that; I do not know what kind of brand that gives us—Andy Briggs, CEO of the Phoenix Group. The business champion does incredible work in promoting suitable employment practices and measures to support those with disabilities or health conditions to stay in, progress in or remain close to the labour market.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Blake, both raised cross-government co-ordination. I am delighted to say that the DWP works closely with other government departments to bring together and advance the full range of projects that could promote better employment outcomes for older people. We collaborate closely on the mid-life MOT—I know that my noble friend Lady Altmann will be pleased about this—with the Money and Pensions Service, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the National Careers Service. This helps people plan ahead to prevent health, skills and pension challenges for a fulfilling later working life, with information on pensions, skills and health. We work with the Department for Education to highlight the interests of older people in relation to the Government’s lifetime skills guarantee, which provides free courses for jobs and £375 million of funding for new skills boot camps, made available through the national skills fund.

I will answer as many of the questions as I can, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not address them all. My noble friend Lady Altmann asked whether the Government would consider incentives for employers to create programmes. On that, I say: please do not just sit in this House if you have a good idea—let us have it. We will write to my noble friend with any other information we have on that.

My noble friend also asked whether the Government would consider ensuring that ageism in the recruitment process is not tacitly accepted, as appears to be the case now. When our work coaches work with over-50s, they sometimes take them to interviews—they do not let them go on their own sometimes—and do the sales pitch. So we are doing everything we can to make sure that age does not prevent people getting where they need to.

My noble friend asked whether the Government would consider a career-changer scheme. If noble Lords have any suggestions on that, we would love to hear them. I cannot answer all the questions on that. I know that my noble friend has encouraged me to ask the Treasury to do some research about taking money out of pensions. This is in my portfolio as the Minister responsible for research, so I will go back and talk to the team about that to see what we can do.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the number of people who have left work: 41% of the people aged 50 to 65 who have come out of the workforce since the pandemic were using a private pension, savings or investments to fund their retirement, but they decided that retirement was now for them. Some of that is really sad.

My noble friend Lord Leicester, who is a very successful businessman, made the point that older workers are reliable and have a broad range of experience and maturity. As I have said, they also have a good influence on the younger workforce. I am in the bottom class for IT—my Private Secretary will endorse that—but I have found that more mature people are pretty good at it, to be honest. We should not make too many judgments that they are not. They can help young people.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about the mid-life MOT. It is a forward-planning exercise that is helpful to the people we are trying to help.

On the Plan for Jobs 50-plus programme, the offer, which my noble friend Lord Leicester raised, will ensure that older jobseekers receive more intensive tailored support, as I said. They will get the support from the work coach that they need in a flexible way. I know that Kickstart was raised in terms of putting more resources into it. I should be happy to have a meeting with my noble friend to learn more about that because we want to learn how it could be enhanced. We have that many programmes that we want to make sure that they have the best resource possible.

I will mention the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who is a noble friend to us all. What an outstanding career she has had in supporting older people. She has made the House richer for her membership and participation. I agree that we should treat everybody and not put them in little silos. I will now get a message saying that I have overrun. Do not worry. We have a national employer team who I meet on a monthly basis. The focus of our next meeting will be older workers. I will try and get back to noble Lords to tell you what the team is doing. There is no place for age discrimination. I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that apprenticeships for older people are working well. I am pleased about that.

I finish by saying that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, absolutely summed it up. Getting people into work is better for the economy and their health, and we must make sure that people are talking about their destiny in the workforce, not what perhaps might have happened. With that, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.

Committee adjourned at 5.12 pm.