In Amelia Hill’s article (UK state pension age should soon be raised to 71, experts say, February 5) Les Mayhew of the International Longevity Center is quoted as saying: “In Britain the state pension age would be 70 or 71 compared to 66 now… But if you add in avoidable ill health, that should increase even more.” The telltale word there is “preventable” – except no one pays any attention to it. The article continues: “At the age of 70 years only 50% of adults in it England and Wales are now free of disability and able to work.” Those who cannot are overwhelmingly poor.
The 2020 Marmot report on health inequalities tells us that healthy life expectancy at birth is on average twelve years longer for those from the least deprived local authorities. I heard Michael Marmot present his first review, in 2010; even then he warned that raising the retirement age would not solve the pension problem due to high disability rates among elderly people who had spent their lives in poverty.
We must put an end to low wages and poor working conditions; reducing child poverty; introduce progressive taxation; set limits on the ratio between the highest and lowest paid; and ensure adequate social safety nets. But these solutions are completely at odds with the hegemony of neoliberal economic policies over the free market. Just as most Americans cannot imagine a world without guns, it seems we cannot imagine a world without unregulated capitalism. Both are eminently possible.
Professor Elspeth Webb (retired)
Penarth, South Wales
I work in the construction industry and cannot actually retire until I am 67. I will be 64 in May and I really could retire now. Although my profession, electrician/electrical engineer, is less demanding than, for example, a bricklayer or plumber, it is still quite physical. At the end of an average day, my joints ache and I feel the fatigue. It also punishes the mind – mental health issues are common in my field.
A phased series of retirement ages would be useful. People who work in nice offices could easily survive well into their 70s, while those of us who spend most of the winter months in partially constructed, unheated building shells or outdoors would be a much smaller burden on the NHS.
Ged Whitney
Sales, Greater Manchester
It seems untenable to always use this precipice of retirement as the only way to deal with increasing life expectancy. At what point is it no longer reasonable to ask someone to work full time? What we need is the right to work fewer hours, especially as you approach retirement age. Why not have a system that allows people to demand a reasonable change to their contract when they turn 60 or even 55, for example. This could be called the “partial retirement age,” and it means that your employer must accommodate your reasonable request to work fewer hours. It would be much more reasonable to expect people to only receive a pension at age 71 or even older when they are entitled to a reduction in their workload, otherwise the existing model will be about working people until they break, which is not is only unfair and immoral, but also not in the economic interest of the country.
Nick Watson
Swanmore, Hampshire
At least you have medical cover in Britain. At age 75, this American is still working as a caregiver for a disabled adult and doesn’t expect to be able to quit anytime soon, mainly because of excellent union-funded health insurance.
Alison Loris
Bremerton, Washington, USA