Equality Bill

My Lords, I support the noble Lord’s amendment, having campaigned for this since the 1970s, as does the Equality and Human Rights Commission of which I am a member. We cannot put everyone of the age of 65 and over into one pot and say that they are all the same. We know that there are numerous people who are "over the hill" at the age of 35 and many others who are well over the default retirement age and who are active and capable of doing extraordinarily good work in whatever field they work. It is ridiculous now to assume that everyone is the same. For many years, retirement age was seen as a form of kindness. It was part of the introduction of pensions and retirement as a concept, which was humane. It gave people a chance to have a little bit of leisure—not often very long—before they died. But longevity increasing all the time has made a big difference to that. We now have a new cycle of life and we must think again about what that means. It is terribly important that we stop patronising older people. That does not mean that everyone should be allowed to go on working whether they are good at their job or not: it means that much better management is necessary. Middle managers in this country are not always as talented as they might be. They must learn how to appraise people throughout their working careers, change people’s jobs to suit their changing aptitudes and help them to move around within an organisation or in different organisations throughout their working lives. We cannot go on thinking the way we used to do about a lifetime's career. I would hate to see any young person waiting for what is commonly called dead men's shoes. That would be appalling. In our anti-age-discrimination legislation, it is not possible for that to happen because we have a duty to look after young adults as well as old adults. It also assumes a pool of labour that is precise and does not change. Of course, that is not true. The labour market is not like that: it is much more flexible. Jobs appear where there is a need for a job and circumstances change all the time, as we heard on the radio and TV this morning, with employment beginning to pick up a little. This is not a fixed thing in our agenda: it changes and people change. The EHRC supports the amendment because we believe that removing the default retirement age would put age discrimination legislation on an equal footing with the other equality strands. It would also make the law simpler and clearer both for employees and employers. It is a blatant form of age discrimination to say, "Yesterday, you could do your job, but it is your birthday today, so now you cannot". In this day and age, it is quite unacceptable to do that. I understand that employers have grave worries about this. Many think that it will mean a lot more bureaucracy, red tape and legal claims. The guidance that the commission and other bodies, such as CIPD, will produce will make this easier for managers and employers and should help to make that adjustment easier to come to terms with. I learnt a lot about this from the United States, which has had legislation banning age discrimination since the 1960s. I have spent a lot of time with American employers, employees, future employees and trades unions. They have not found that the number of age discrimination cases rose; on the contrary, they fell when the mandatory retirement age was banned. They look after the older age group only in terms of age discrimination, but we look at both ends of the age scale. As we know, there are positive business and economic benefits if we can scrap the mandatory retirement age. It is not just the demographic situation that makes it essential that we do so, but that is something to think about. By 2021, there will be a further 4 million older people and 1 million fewer adults under 50, so it is inevitable that employers will have to rely on a more age-diverse workforce. We must do something about this. We must remember that these amendments would not prevent forced retirement altogether. Employers could continue to operate mandatory retirement ages for certain jobs if they could be objectively justified. We could produce examples where it would be common sense to assume that at a certain stage in life the risk was greater than the benefit of staying in a job; for example, Boeing pilots aged 94. That would continue, as that is an objective reason for keeping a retirement age. If these amendments are accepted, an employee who faced dismissal could bring an employment tribunal claim arguing that a mandatory retirement age was an unjustifiable exception to the general rule against age discrimination. I hope that noble Lords will support this amendment.