State Pension: Age Increase

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an important point. One of the requirements on the Secretary of State when she comes to do the statutory review of the state pension age is to look at issues such as life expectancy. Every now and again, someone comes up with the idea of varying the state pension age by, for example, location or profession. The reality is that, whereas there are differences between regions or professions, in some cases the differences within them are as great as or greater than the differences between them, so trying to find a way of doing something that would be fair, other than a simple state pension age, is challenging. The real challenge for this Government, as for everyone, is that we should not have these regional variations in our country. We are one country, and we should be tackling those kinds of regional inequalities so that we do not end up in this position.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that we should move to when people start paying national insurance? People often start work at 16 in construction and other jobs, while others do not start work until 23 or 24. Should there not be some understanding about the different types of people, how long they are in work and what jobs they do?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

There are variations. One of the challenges is that, now we want to keep young people in education, training or employment until 18, we find that fewer people leave school and start work early. My noble friend is raising an underlying point that is really about fairness. We want to see everybody having the opportunity to study for as long as is genuinely helpful and suits them, then to move into fulfilling work and to be able to progress in it over time. I return to one of the challenges. The Secretary of State will consider all factors, but if we look at how difficult it is—and we know how hard we have had to work—to communicate a single state pension age, trying to communicate variable state pensions ages risks complicating it. But my noble friend raises an important point, and we will keep it under consideration.