Raising the State Pension Age to 68

Those key principles that we established were not that different from what the Labour Government did in previous pension Acts when they brought in pension age rises. It is overwhelmingly in the interests of a stable pension system that we keep those fundamental principles in place. We do not want to end up in another situation like we had with the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, where women—and I met many of them in my constituency—genuinely did not know that their state pension age was going up significantly until they tried to claim it or thought they were about to get it, only to in some cases find out that it was another five or six years away. That is why we need to ensure we have that certainty in place. I know that that was changed in the Pensions Act 1995, so everybody had at least 15 years’ notice for most of it, but people just were not told, or at least not in a way that they understood or noticed. We need a clear, stable pension architecture, as was established under the coalition Government, with a single-tier state pension above the poverty threshold, so that people could save for themselves and had predictability.

This is not random conspiracy theory nonsense. Articles are occasionally written by people who just do not believe that when they get to retirement age, their state pension will be there, or that they will ever get to it. In fact, there was an article in the Daily Mail raising exactly that point. Reading other stuff around, we see that there is a general pervasive fear that people will never get to state pension age—that it will always be pushed just out of reach and they will never actually get there. That is why we need to be absolutely clear that that is not what we are trying to do here. We have a predictable and reliable state pension system that people can factor into their retirement savings and then use to plan for the later years of their life. I am sure the Minister will be able to reaffirm that that is absolutely the Government’s position.

There is a question about whether the Government are minded to make a change. I think the Cridland review suggested that we could have brought the change forward to the late 2030s, at least, so it should not be a complete surprise if we think that 2044 is probably too late and would result in that figure of roughly 33% becoming a bit generous and people getting a bit longer than that. We need to set out the rationale for that pretty clearly and try to work through how we can help people who will be put in the most difficult position by that change. Intriguingly, the Cridland review said that if the Government are after Budget savings, increasing the state pension age is not a very clever way to do that. Instead, the review recommended abolishing the pension triple lock, which, I suspect, is not a view that has great support around Parliament. Hopefully this latest review does not re-recommend that, and the Government will not accept it if it does.

There were, though, some sensible analyses and recommendations as to what we can do to help people who are out of work in their mid-60s because they are either not really fit for work or not realistically going to get a job then. How do we give them financial support when we cannot give them their state pension? Do we subject them to full universal credit conditionality, or can we find a way of giving them a better experience? The review recommended potentially allowing people to access the state pension a year early, having a benefit equivalent to the state pension at least a year early or having a tapering-off approach to UC or UC conditionality, in case people fall out of work at just the wrong point.

I am not actually aware that the Government have ever really put in place any of those measures, so that would be another ask of the Minister. If the Government are thinking of making a change, while we do need the notice, can we also put in place a plan early for handling those who will be the worst affected by the change? I think we will need that for the rise to 67, anyway, which is coming up much sooner. It is just not realistic for people who fall out of work very late in their working life to get another job, and leaving them in financial trouble for those last few months before they get their pension seems to be a rather inefficient and cruel situation. Hopefully we will have made some progress on that before we get to the next pension age.

I would also like to say that I do not think handling this sort of issue as part of the Budget process is necessarily sensible. This change will not affect the public finances this year or next year, or, actually, the next Parliament; it may not be until the Parliament after that, or possibly even the Parliament after that, when this triggers any financial savings. There is not, as far as I can tell, any real Budget sensitivity to how the Government make this announcement, so I do not think we need to have a shroud of secrecy over what the Government are thinking of doing.

What the Government should do is publish the Neville-Rolfe review. It would be helpful if Baroness Neville-Rolfe could appear before the Work and Pensions Committee and explain the findings of her review. I think she has been brought back as a Minister in a different Department, so I am not entirely clear whether that would be permitted. Could we have a Minister from a different Department answering questions about a review they led before they were a Minister? I cannot think of any reason why not. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that the Government would be happy for her to come and explain the findings of her review. We could then have an open consultation about the content of that review and come up with a coherent policy, rather than it being dropped out by the Treasury and perhaps consulted on afterwards. The fear is always that once something has been announced, there is much less chance of it being changed.

I hope that the Government will get the feeling from this debate that people are concerned about there being further rises in the state pension age before we have had a chance to assess fully the impacts of the rise to 66—let alone the rise to 67 that is coming. I think we all recognise that it is a difficult situation and that it is worse for different parts of the country, worse for people in different occupations and possibly worse for women than for men. It would be useful to understand those implications and how we can mitigate them before we make any further decisions.

Fundamentally, if life expectancy data is not going as has been forecast, we should respond to the facts as they change and accept that our policy on expected changes to the state pension age can change as well, that we do not need the increases to come as fast and as often as we had thought, and that we should just leave things as they are. Let us hope that life expectancy starts to increase again. We can make these decisions then, rather than rushing into things that really hurt people, that bring uncertainty to the pension system—we do not need that—and that will probably not bring any financial savings for several Chancellors.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Let me restate my point: our pension architecture and the foundations on which we have been trying to build the system are all still there and are robust, and we can all rely on them.

I have often expressed great regret that the Department, for some reason or other—perhaps reflecting a different approach across Government—has abandoned the practice set out by David Cameron and instead now resists publication of research and analysis, or delays it for as long as it possibly can. Preventing public discussion no doubt has the benefit of allowing Ministers to avoid having to answer difficult questions, but it has the disastrous drawback of worsening policy outcomes. The policy cannot be informed by public debate before the decisions are made, because the evidence that would allow a debate is not available. The Government publication protocol was watered down a little last year, but its essential gist remains unchanged. It says, for example:

“The primary purpose of social research commissioned and conducted by government is to inform…policy and delivery, but it also plays a role in wider policy debate.”

That is quite right, but, as we have discussed in the Chamber on various occasions, in the DWP the requirements of the protocol are simply ignored. They are not being fulfilled.

I have been hoping very much that the new ministerial team will turn over a new leaf and take a more enlightened approach. Indeed, the new Secretary of State has hinted that he is considering the advantages of greater openness. But here we have a flagrant example of his predecessor’s bad habits of hiding analysis and evidence until it is convenient to the Government to release them. Instead of publishing the evidence four months before the Government’s decision, as was done in 2017—around the time the former pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Hexham, was appointed—the Department is keeping the evidence hidden until it makes its announcement “early in 2023”. Presumably, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley has suggested, that will be at the time of the Budget next month.

In my brief contribution to this important debate, I mainly want to press the Minister to publish now both the report by the independent reviewer, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, which the Secretary of State received on 16 September last year—more than four months ago—and the related Government Actuary’s report, which was submitted to Ministers on 5 October. Publish them now. Why have they not been published already? What possible benefit can there be in keeping this important work and evidence hidden for all this time?

The Select Committee has published today an exchange of letters with the Minister on the subject. When asked why these reports are not being published before the Government’s announcement as they were for the 2017 review, the Minister, who is in her place, replied that

“this is a different publication schedule to the last review, the issues are still under consideration and so we think this approach is more appropriate.”

In other words, they appear to be saying, “We don’t want anyone to see the evidence until we have made up our mind. This is still under consideration, so we think it is not appropriate to publish the evidence.” Surely, there ought to be a public debate about all this before the Government make their decision, not afterwards. This instinct of hiding things, not disclosing them, and not complying with the requirements of the cross-Government protocol is very damaging to the Government’s ability to make good policy.

Surely, Ministers should take advantage of public debate to inform their decisions, rather than refusing to show anyone the evidence until after the Government have made up their mind. What has become of David Cameron’s belief in sunlight? We are talking here not about confidential advice to Ministers—there is no requirement to publish that—but rather about expert analysis that will eventually be published, and which sets out the evidence that will underpin the Government’s decision. Publish it now so that everybody can see it. The protocol says that

“analysis should be published promptly…as early as possible following agreement of the final output.”

So it should be. The recent independent review was announced in December 2021. The terms of reference said that it should explore what metrics the Government should take into account when considering how to set state pension age. They stated that it should include a consideration of recent trends in life expectancy in every part of the United Kingdom; whether it remained right for there to be a fixed proportion of adult life that people should, on average, expect to spend over state pension age, and what metrics would enable state pension costs, and the importance of sharing those fairly between generations, to be taken into account.

The Select Committee agreed months ago that once Baroness Neville-Rolfe’s review had been published, we would take evidence on it, including from her, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, before the Government announced their decision. Now that the Government are unwilling to publish the analysis before they announce their decision, we clearly cannot do that.

The Sun has reported that the Government plan to raise the state pension age from 67 to 68 as early as 2035, which will affect everyone who is 54 and under, instead of 10 years later, as set out in current legislation. Is that the right thing to do? Well, we need to see the evidence. The key evidence is about future projections of life expectancy. As we heard from the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), emerging evidence shows that the trend of rising life expectancy is not what it was before the pandemic.

One of the expert witnesses at this morning’s meeting of the Select Committee said, “Mortality seems to have peaked, because one reason why there was increasing mortality was that the second world war lifestyle was ironically quite healthy for people, and the numbers are now going down quite a lot.” We were discussing something else this morning, and I do not know what evidence the witness was drawing on there, but I do not know what evidence the Government will draw on either, because it has not been published and it should have been. There should be no delay in publishing it.

Cohort life expectancy statistics are produced every two years. A new set is expected this year. The latest, 2020-based projections show life expectancy at 65 still rising, but at a slower rate than in previous releases. Of course, the 2020 figures did not take any account of changes arising from the pandemic. The change in projection has prompted some commentators to call for the planned rises in the state pension age to be abandoned, or at least to be slowed.

Lane Clark & Peacock took the latest Office for National Statistics life expectancy projections and reran the 2017 calculations of the Government Actuary’s Department. They concluded that any move from 67 to 68 would not be needed until the mid-2060s rather than the mid-2040s, and certainly not by the late 2030s, as suggested by The Sun. They also suggested that the move from 66 to 67, which is currently scheduled to be phased in over two years from 2026, could be put back until the end of the 2040s. They went on to argue that if further ONS statistics show relatively lower life expectancy growth, that could imply further delays to planned increases, and perhaps even abandoning the planned rise to 67.

The former pensions Minister but two—I think— Steve Webb, who is now a partner at Lane Clark & Peacock said:

“The Government’s plans for rapid increases in state pension age have been blown out of the water by this new analysis. Even before the Pandemic hit, the improvements in life expectancy which we had seen over the last century had almost ground to a halt.”

Those are important public policy questions. They should be debated in Parliament and among the public before the Government announce their decision, so that that public and parliamentary debate can inform the Government’s decision. We should not just see the evidence after the Government have announced what they plan to do, because changing the Government’s mind at that point will not happen.

A wide public debate should take place now, but it cannot happen unless the independent review and the Government Actuary’s report are published before the announcement is made. I ask the Minister to resist the temptation to keep the documents hidden for even longer and instead to remember the wise words of David Cameron, and to be open and publish those two key documents.

Secondly, people might have made different career choices or made career changes if they had known that they would have to work for longer. Thirdly, the expected extra years of work—eight whole years, in the case of women of my age—may mean that people will need extra skills training and support during their working life. If the pension age is to be extended even further, budgetary consideration will need to be given to support for lifelong learning, with leave being given for skilling up and study being prioritised for people affected by the change.

For many people, the ages of 60 to 68 represent a period in which, in the eyes of bosses or fellow workers, they may be considered past the peak of employability. I am pleased to say that that is not the case for contributions in this place, but age discrimination in our society is very real. I suggest that no further changes should be made to pension age unless such age discrimination is firmly and clearly tackled.

If we want people to work later in life, we have to give them the tools, support and legal protection that they need to do so. That is all the more important because age discrimination in particular terms and conditions of employment is currently perfectly legal. If the pension age is to be extended, the law needs to be changed. Age discrimination, like any other form of discrimination, is humiliating, demeaning and damaging. We do not want to subject people to it by making them remain in work while such prejudice continues.

I have a constituent, Stephen, who at the age of 66 —the current statutory pensionable age—is facing just such lawful age discrimination. He has worked for a very large Kent company for more than 30 years. He is an effective, respected and well-liked employee with a fantastic track record of work. When Stephen reached his 66th birthday, he did not get a birthday card from his bosses; he got a letter to the effect that it was not possible to sack him on grounds of age, so instead they were terminating his life insurance, his health insurance and all his other insurance benefits.

Stephen was doing the same job at 66, at 66 minus one day and at 66 plus one day, but now he does not get the same money’s worth in relation to his contract of employment. If he falls ill, he cannot get the same access to speedy private healthcare that other people working for the company can. If—heaven forbid—he died, his wife would no longer have compensatory insurance. However, he is doing exactly the same job as someone else. It is the same job he did before, and the same job he will do the day after. The attitude demonstrated by the company communicates to him and to the wider employment community in Kent that it thinks a person who is older is worth less. We must tackle that issue if people are to stay in the workplace longer.

I have looked into the policy considerations that are sometimes put forward. The first, essentially, is that an older person does not need to work. As a woman who has been in the workplace for quite a long time now, I remember a time when employers would say that a woman did not need to work, did not need to get the same bonuses as a man, and did not need to be offered overtime, because it was men who had families to feed. We have outlawed that, because equal pay at work is not about who is doing the work, but about what the work is. Allowing age discrimination, as we do now, sends a message that an older person is not worth the same as a younger one. The continual changes in the pension age also send a clear message that older people’s safety, stability and security in managing their own lives are not a priority.

The second reason put forward is that it becomes more expensive for everyone—the premium for the company itself goes up—if older people are included in corporate benefits, or global benefits, beyond the statutory age. To apply that logic, would it be okay to disallow health cover in an employment context to someone who had a chronic condition that could give rise, or had given rise, to needing that policy? Of course not; we would say that that was discriminatory and wrong. At the heart of equalities law is the fundamental view that employers cannot discriminate between those they employ based on characteristics that are not relevant to whether they can carry out the job. By continuing a discussion of the type that has been happening about the pension age moving and whether people will be supported in older-age working, we are failing to address this absolutely dreadful discriminatory environment.

The third and final reason given is that a disincentive to recruit older workers would be created, because the costs I have mentioned would be higher for the company. I agree that we do not want to create disincentives to employing older people, particularly if we are to require people to work for years and years more than they had expected, but the argument sounds awfully similar to the well-known discussion about whether the cost of maternity leave would dissuade employers from employing women who become pregnant. We outlawed that, and we know that a woman can still add value, be productive and be effective when pregnant, so why are we making people work longer? Why are we raising the statutory pension age and communicating from this Parliament that it is okay to discriminate against older workers? It is not, and it is wrong—all the more so if the pension age is raised from 66 to 68, because we would be raising it above an age at which employers are already discriminating against workers, as I have illustrated. Unless we tackle age discrimination, we will continue to have an environment in which it will be very difficult for people who are working in older age.

As these pension changes are brought forward, I do not feel that enough has been done to support, encourage and incentivise employers to look favourably on an older workforce. For example, national insurance contributions could be reduced for older workers. Also, if people are excluded from benefits by reason of the current law, older workers should receive money or money’s worth in cash or vouchers to make up for the work benefits that have been removed from them.

By way of conclusion, I am not persuaded by the arguments for increasing the pension age further or discriminating on the grounds of age. It is simply not acceptable. There is no justification for the treatment of my hard-working and loyal constituent Stephen with the discrimination he has faced in his workplace. If the pension age is to be raised again and we are going to keep making these changes, forcing people to stay in work for longer, age discrimination must be tackled first. We should be taking steps now to change behaviours in the workplace to make sure that older people who now have to work longer will be able to do so and will be treated fairly and equitably. We should be outlawing this outdated and discriminatory law against older workers.

Although this debate is about the future, I cannot mention the WASPI women without talking about their ongoing right for compensation. They have been waiting years now, and thousands have died without ever seeing a penny. The ombudsman is expected to report within a matter of months, but the only thing that has taken longer than their investigation is the Government’s inability to decide to do the right thing and to promise to follow the results of that report. I hope the Minister will make reference to that in her closing remarks.

The Government must learn lessons from what has happened to the WASPI women. If we are going to see changes, they must be communicated early and fully. People must be able to plan ahead. Age UK suggests 10 years as the length of time in which people need certainty to plan for retirement, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley mentioned. I hope that the Government can continue to commit to that.

I said it was important to remember the faces behind the figures, and it is vital that the Government remember that life expectancy is based on averages, and that all people are not alike. There are already people struggling to work to 66 through no fault of their own. Manual workers, whether farmers or factory workers, are just more likely to struggle to keep up as the impact of a life of labouring catches up with them. The fictional police sergeant Catherine Cawood of “Happy Valley” may hopefully be reaching her retirement from the police on Sunday night in the concluding episode of the series, but she will be 56 when she does so. That is because we accept that police officers are not necessarily physically capable of being able to chase offenders or fight or do any of the physical things we expect. We may hope, however, that Catherine Cawood, as well as going to the Himalayas, can also continue to contribute in a part-time work capacity elsewhere.

Health problems for many mean that people cannot work full time. Part-time working is increasing, and many people have caring responsibilities. This is the generation of sandwich carers who take care of their parents, their children or grandchildren and, when needed, their partners. There is of course a benefit to the economy, and to older workers themselves, of continuing to work if they can. If that is the Government’s aim, I implore them to see that increasing the state pension age, when we are not seeing a corresponding rise in health and life expectancy, is not the solution. People might be living longer, but they are not necessarily doing so in good health.

There are steps that the Government could take. I continue to champion the needs of unpaid carers, many of whom are in the pre-retirement age bracket. I welcome the Government’s support for my Carer’s Leave Bill, which will have its Third Reading on Friday, and look forward to their support as it passes through the Lords, but there is still much to do. Reforming carer’s allowance, securing flexible working as a day one right, offering more training and respite for carers, and investing in local services such as day centres would all help, as would more re-training, as the hon. Member for Dover mentioned, and a greater understanding of what is keeping older workers out of the workforce. We need to ensure that there is a social security net for people who have paid in and who, for whatever reason, cannot manage those final few years. That would be more effective at encouraging people to work longer, even past retirement age, than just forcing people somehow to soldier on.

Of course, there is a balance to be struck. The pension age must be both effective and sustainable. I agree that it must realistically reflect how long people can expect to live after retirement. We all see adverts pop up on our social media about how to retire at 40, but we know the Government could not be expected to fund such a period. Knowing that there is a balance means also making the expectation of the state pension realistic. I want my children, and my children’s children, to have it to look forward to one day. Our younger generations have suffered the outcomes of Brexit, of covid and of the cost of living crisis. Owning a house is a dream, not a reality for far too many. Future generations deserve the same promises, the same security as those that came before. We must not pull up the ladder.

I urge the Government to use this opportunity to reassure the House that they will follow the rules on determining retirement age by looking at life expectancy, protect those who struggle to work later in life and help those in work who can do so. Too often in recent years the Government have trailed potentially detrimental pension changes only to withdraw them later. Today’s debate gives them an opportunity to make sure that that is not the case in future.

So many people are already in poor health by the time they reach their state pension and they are already suffering financial hardship.

As the hon. Member for North East Fife said, probably every one of us has spoken to women born in the 1950s, and when we do they tell us that the biggest UK Government swindle in recent memory was robbing their generation of their rightful state pensions at the age of 60. Many discovered, often by sheer accident, that their anticipated pension would not arrive until years later, as there was equalisation with men. The anger, sense of betrayal and disappointment was only inflamed when UK Government Ministers bizarrely and insensitively insisted that this provided an opportunity for the women affected to train for new careers. Some of them then formed the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, which continues to campaign for the injustice against them to be recognised and remedied. They must be given the compensation that is their right and I applaud the work they have done, because those women faced delays of up to six years to access their state pension, one in four of them now struggle to make payments on crucial bills and one third are in debt, with single women the worst affected. So that we can avoid this happening again, will the Minister tell us what impact assessment the UK Government have carried out, or will carry out, on any further proposals to accelerate the rise in the state pension age to 68 by 2034 or, indeed, to accelerate it at all?

It seems to the people outside this Chamber who are worried about this or who have experienced this, as the WASPI women have, that this Government have developed a taste for robbing people of their hard-earned state pension. The website Interactive Investor calculates that bringing forward to 2034 the increase in someone’s pension age to 68 could mean a lost year of full state pension of almost £17,000 for workers aged 46. Royal London insurance found that more than half of those aged 55 and over are likely to have the state pension as their main income, with 1.5 million of those in pre-state-pension years, and 31 % with no savings at all to fall back on. Many of them are also struggling with caring responsibilities as well as financial ones.

Pensioners relying on state pension as their main source of income are more likely to have already undergone a working life of low pay, and they are more likely to have health challenges in retirement and a shorter life expectancy. They are also the pensioners who simply cannot afford to retire early, even when health problems occur. Raising the retirement age even further will therefore have a disproportionate effect on poorer older people who will enjoy fewer retirement years.

A review of the state pension age in 2017 established that people should expect to spend one third of their adult life in retirement. As we know and as has been said, life expectancy in the UK is, at best, stagnating, which seriously undermines the case for raising the state pension age. I am afraid that those considerations will not have an impact on Government thinking and that the very logic they have used in the past for increasing state pension age—rising life expectancy—will not apply. If that is the case, I would remind the Minister that not only have life expectancy rates stalled across the UK, but they have actually fallen for the second year in a row in Scotland. Perhaps the Minister would like to factor that in when determining the state pension age. According to the UK Government’s own argument and the logic they have used so far, the state pension age should perhaps even be falling.

The UK Government must abandon any further acceleration of the state pension age across the UK. I hope that all parties will oppose that and commit to continuing that opposition beyond the next election. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, if you keep tinkering with, accelerating and rising the state pension age, you create uncertainty and undermine the whole concept of a state pension, perhaps fatally undermining it for future generations.

Even talk of accelerating the state pension age feels like a grubby smash and grab of people’s hard-earned pensions to try to fill the black hole in the UK’s finances, which is a consequence of 13 years of austerity. That austerity started under Labour’s Gordon Brown and has continued ever since, compounded by the damage of Brexit to which Labour is fully signed up, cynically and disingenuously pretending that there is such a thing as a good Brexit after all. Labour knows that, but it is so desperate to win seats in England, it will say anything. But the public are watching.

To raise the state pension age further is bad enough. To raise it even faster than originally planned as a cost-cutting measure is unforgivable. People in Scotland were told in 2014 that the only way to protect the state pension was to vote no to independence. Here we are nine years later, and the state pension does not support the minimum standard of living. Pensioners have already been short-changed by £6,500 on average, due to the state pension underpayments to around 237,000 older people, and a further 100,000 potential underpayments that have been identified, which will take a year to correct. Let us not forget how easily the Government discarded their manifesto commitment to retain the triple lock, the abandonment of which means that current state pension payments are £520 less than they otherwise would have been.

We must all learn from the huge injustice perpetrated on WASPI women—I applaud their campaign for justice—but we cannot permit even more people to be robbed of tens of thousands of pounds of their rightful state pension as life expectancy stalls or even falls in Scotland. Meanwhile, our Government desperately seek to fill their financial black hole because of their own incompetence, and therefore have decided to pick a fight over pensions. That is an outrage. In the dying days of this Government, as they thrash around seeking to pick the pockets of others to pay for their own economic mismanagement, we must say that enough is enough.

Independent research by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association using data from Loughborough University showed the scale of the Government’s failure. It showed that the basic state pension has now fallen below the cost of living. The PLSA put the basic cost of living for a single pensioner at £12,800, more than £2,000 above the basic state pension, which will be £10,600 in the financial year 2023-24.

The Government’s mismanagement of the economy and their desperate attempts to cut public spending form the backdrop to today’s debate. This is made even worse by Ministers’ disregard for pensioners, the House and the public. The Government’s pattern of behaviour is in stark contrast to the way in which Governments have conducted themselves in the past. As I mentioned earlier, there has been a long-standing convention that pensions policy is based on evidence and agreed by consensus. For example, when the evidence showed that life expectancy was increasing, there was a discussion about the impact on the state pension age, and it was agreed that it should be gradually increased. The UK already has one of the higher state pension ages among OECD countries.

Following extensive consultation about the impact of increased life expectancy in the 2000s, the Government established the Pensions Commission to look into the issue. As a result, and after a great deal of discussion, it was agreed that the state pension age should be raised. The Pensions Act 2007 provided for it to be increased from 65 to 68 in stages over the period between 2024 and 2046. I should stress that those increases were agreed at a time of steady rises in life expectancy. The current situation is somewhat different, to say the least. As we heard earlier, there is clear evidence of a stalling of the increase in life expectancy. Data from the Office for National Statistics on healthy life expectancy between 2018 and 2020 shows a downward trend in most regions of the UK, and the situation for some pensioners seems to be even worse, with a fall in life expectancy among some groups since 2010. We have heard several examples of that today, and there are others.

There is also clear and, in my view, deeply troubling evidence of local disparities, with gaps of about 10 years between the average life expectancy of some people—often those living in better-off areas—and that of their neighbours living in less well-off areas comparatively nearby. The full impact of the pandemic on long-term health is unclear, and there seem to be a growing number of older people of working age who are suffering from serious health conditions. That evidence needs to be considered carefully.

I appreciate that time is limited. Let me end by saying that the Government are letting down both pensioners and people saving for pensions. They have broken with the long-standing convention that pensions policy is developed on the basis of evidence, through consultation and discussion. I hope the Minister will address these issues in her speech. I know that she does prefer to consult, even if some of her colleagues do not always follow that approach.