Support for an end to the "default retirement age" appears to be growing, ahead of the High Court hearing of the Age Concern and Help the Aged judicial review of the age regulations next month.
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee will recommend that the default retirement age, which allows employers to retire employees at age 65 without giving a reason or justifying the decision, should be scrapped. In its report into pensioner poverty, due to be published next month, the Committee will highlight the economic reasons for abolishing mandatory retirement now, rather than waiting for the review planned for 2011.
According to Terry Rooney MP, the chair of the committee, the current law is both discriminatory and a drain on public finances.
The Committee had previously called for the removal of the default retirement age in its report on the Equality Bill (PDF format, 1.99MB), which found that the default retirement age "contradicts the Government's wider social policy and labour market objectives to raise the average retirement age and allow people to continue to work and save for their retirement". These comments were presumably not welcomed by BIS (the department with responsibility for the age regulations) who will have to show in the High Court next month that the opposite is the case, and that the default retirement age is appropriate and necessary in order to achieve legitimate social policy aims such as those related to employment policy or the labour market.
If the judicial review brought by Age Concern and Help the Aged is successful, the age regulations will have to be amended, as recommended by the Work and Pensions Committee, to remove the default retirement age. It is expected that, if this happens, employers would only be allowed to retire employees if they could justify the decision to do so.
You can read more about the recommendations of the Work and Pensions Committee on the Guardian and the Telegraph websites.
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Comments (2)
HI
I just thought that age should not be a consideration for retiring personnel from their jobs due to age. It should be related to whether the person can do the job or not and with so much experience and knowledge gained by the time one gets to 65 it is a waste of knowledge and skills to make the person retire just because he/she is now 65 or 60.
My husband will be 65 next year and he is devestated that he will be made to retire when he can do the job he is doing better than the youngsters he works with, both in stamina and in skills. He is physically fit and so this rule will make it an age related descrimination in his case, just as I am sure that there are several people in this catagory
Posted by Gita and Barry henley | August 23, 2009 11:36 AM
Posted on August 23, 2009 11:36
Thanks for this comment. As the law on mandatory retirement is currently being challenged in the courts (by Age Concern under what is known as the Heyday case), the position could have changed by the time your husband is due to retire. He, and his employer, should get up to date advice nearer the time, and keep an eye on this blog for updates.
Posted by Susie Munro | August 25, 2009 12:46 PM
Posted on August 25, 2009 12:46