Ageing: Public Services and Demographic Change Committee Report

Lord Borwick Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords,

“Old age ain’t no place for sissies”,

as the late, great Bette Davis once said. This excellent report underscores the importance of that statement, and in markedly better English too. I am grateful for the opportunity to deliver my maiden speech on a subject so vitally important.

I took my oath on 29 July, after the whole House so generously elected me as a hereditary Peer to the Conservative Benches. I noticed that your Lordships considered my arrival and immediately went on Recess. This allowed me, though, to wander the temporarily lonely corridors of this fine building and to consume the time so unselfishly given by so many of the senior staff to bemused new Members such as me—and what an extraordinarily talented group of directors and senior staff I have met. My thanks are due to all of them, and particularly to my whip and mentor, my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark.

My previous career has been in the automotive, housing and finance industries, but with a constant thread of disability. The reason may be that our two eldest sons had very bad heart defects when they were born. Our eldest son had to spend his entire first year of life in the intensive care ward at the great Royal Brompton Hospital, leaving him with some permanent disabilities. However, my wife Victoria and I are great believers in the American maxim, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Perhaps this is why I worked to make the London taxi wheelchair accessible. The secret was to make the accessibility ordinary rather than extraordinary; to make it normal and not mark it with wheelchair signs.

Disability will be ordinary in the future of our ageing society, as ordinary as hearing aids and glasses are today. The truth is that every one of us spends time in a wheelchair. That wheelchair is called a pram, or maybe I should say a baby buggy now, and we are very lucky if it is only at the beginning of our lives that we need such a wheelchair. If our physical environment must change to become even more accessible, our younger citizens had better start demanding it now so that it is ready when they need it for themselves. And yet our young people ignore their longevity—a point made in this remarkable report.

As the report says, arbitrary age triggers are out of date now, such as getting a free BBC TV licence at the age of 75 or being compelled to retire at any particular age whatever. Age-based benefits become increasingly absurd as the population grows older. Nobody knows better than the individual how well he or she is ageing. Many people will be able to start whole new careers when they are retired. In America, the Prudential advertises pension savings plans with the strap-line, “If you could pay yourself to do what you love in retirement, what would you do? Would you be a teacher? Would you be a musician or a painter?”. That is the optimist’s point of view. For many people who have saved wisely, the freedom to take risks and learn new skills will be very attractive. Many of us here in the House certainly are lucky to have started whole new careers as parliamentarians. The point is that arbitrary regulation by age is flawed.

Two differences stand out about the current cohort of young people who will eventually become Britain’s ageing population. The first is that they are definitely more computer literate than today’s average pensioner. They will expect information to arrive via the internet, not through newspapers or TV. Monitoring their health, happiness and well-being will be so much easier and cheaper in the future. We also need new ways to reduce their loneliness.

The second difference is that the level of debt they will bear will become heavier than anyone imagines, both as their share of our national debt but also through their own personal debts. I do not know what brouhaha will erupt when it finally dawns on people how much their predecessors have spent, leaving the bills to be financed later. The cost of servicing debt will inevitably claw into the cash available to look after our older citizens.

Next month Britons will remember fondly the veterans who gave their lives to protect our nation from destruction in two world wars. I hope that in decades to come Britons as yet unborn will look back in gratitude at what today’s leaders did to bequeath them a financially sound economy with debts at lower and more manageable levels.

There is nobody more aware of the value of experience than a brand new Member of your Lordships’ House, surrounded by the experienced people who constitute his new colleagues. I look forward to learning from all of you.