Employment Equality (Repeal of Retirement Age Provisions) Regulations 2011

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Grand Committee

In summary, abolishing the default retirement age will ensure that older people have greater choice and opportunity to work up to the age of 65 and beyond. In turn, this will boost the UK’s labour supply and contribute to economic growth. Older people bring a wealth of talent and experience to the United Kingdom’s labour market. For these reasons, I commend the regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Cotter]

I am glad to support this measure, which is certainly welcome. The Minister has been very clear in his remarks supporting this, as indeed was the case in the other place when it was discussed.

There is no question that many people when they reach the age of 65 will welcome the opportunity of being able to carry on working. As the Minister has said, the experience and talents they have gained over many years can often be a great loss to the business community, if they have to retire when they feel they can still contribute to the workplace.

I would like personally to attest to this particular measure. The Minister referred to this Chamber, this place where we work in Parliament. The Minister may perhaps have been looking at me, I hope, when he said that many people here operate quite effectively after retirement age. In my case, certainly, being just short of 10 years beyond the retirement age, I welcome it very much indeed as an opportunity to contribute with some of the experience that I have gained—for my own personal satisfaction and, I hope, for others.

It is also very much a pleasure for me to support this measure, having been in the small business sector. There is no question that when I ran my small business, I was more than happy for people to work—sometimes it turned out to be part-time—beyond retirement age. The statistics that back this measure indicate that so many people feel that they have something of value to offer and so many people are appreciated for those reasons. I am glad to support the measure wholeheartedly. I thank the Minister for a clear explanation of what we are discussing today.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I, too, support this legislation. It is safe to say that it is an idea whose time has come. Some would say that it is not before time. As a member of the previous Government, I can say that we had planned a review, but this Government have anticipated that process, and probably rightly so. All the evidence of increased longevity, the contribution to the labour market, productivity and performance that the Minister drew to our attention are valid points.

I have one or two questions and comments. I understand the need to introduce the exception to make the group insurance benefits legal, but I wondered whether someone at some point might attempt to say that there is nevertheless discrimination by not allowing those benefits to include them. Have the Government looked at that aspect?

I must admit that I fell into the group of people who felt that doing away with this would have an impact on youth employment, until I looked at the impact assessment. In some ways I would describe it as counterintuitive, but it is hard to argue with what seems to be an overwhelming weight of evidence. I say only that I still feel that it would be valuable to monitor the situation, but one cannot quarrel with the evidence of the impact assessment.

I have a comment about flexibility. In this country we still have what I call “cliff-edge retirement”: for the most part, you are fully employed and then you are retired. This is something that the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, referred to in passing when he talked about people becoming part-time. There is not a lot of evidence of that. The situation tends to be what I have just described. Once upon a time we in the trade union labour movement thought about the idea of a flexible decade of retirement where we did not fix on a particular age. We ought to be thinking about which legislation would enable employers to be more flexible in employment prior to retirement because of the impact of pensions and so on.

I agree with the points that the Minister made about performance management, appraisal procedures and the need for open dialogue. There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about the number of employment tribunals. If you examine how many times the tribunals succeed, you will find that it is mainly because employers do not operate procedures and do not practise open dialogue. If there were more of that going on instead, that would be good. Looking at things like raising the amount of time relating to unfair dismissal from one year to two will not solve the problem. The Minister is much more on the right lines when she talks about the importance of having the right personnel procedures.

I looked at the reasoning behind introducing the regulations with guidance rather than a code of practice. Again, I understand why the Government have decided that, but I ask that we keep that one under review to see whether in fact guidance is sufficient in these circumstances. Those comments and questions aside, though, I enthusiastically welcome the Government’s approach.