HC Deb 23 December 1964 vol 704 cc1302-22

3.41 p.m.

Mr. Dudley Smith (Brentford and Chiswick)

This is the season of good will. It is, therefore, appropriate that the final debate in this series today should be on an intensely human problem. This is one which I submit to the House needs tact, understanding and, above all, renewed appreciation on the part of industry, commerce and Government. I further submit that it is a problem which is growing. I refer to the question of the employment problems of those over 50. All the remarks I shall make today in a reasonably brief speech will be non-partisan, because this is a non-political matter. It was in existence at the time of the last Government. It will be in existence during the time of the present Government. Whichever party is in power during the next 10 years the problem will still be in existence then.

Those concerned are largely professional and commercial people and a certain number of skilled workers. I do not want to deal today with the artisan, because, important as he is, he is a special problem in himself. When he is over 50, he usually finds it fairly easy to get other employment. We know there are problems of automation causing redundancy and involving the question of retraining, but this is a vast and massive subject which needs to be dealt with specially.

My point concerns people who would call themselves of the executive and higher executive class. The cry "Too old at 50" has been growing ever since the end of the Second World War. Everywhere in management and in industry the call is for young men. The age level is coming down. We hear now that the cry is "Too old at 45". I imagine that as time passes it will become lower than that. Indeed, a visitor returning to these islands after an absence of, say, 25 years might be pardoned for thinking, if he examined industry and management, that we are so age-conscious that we judge everything as if we were running a professional football team or a school for jet pilots.

Some hon. Members might think it is ironical that a Member of Parliament should even seek to raise this subject, because he is in surely the most insecure profession of them all. But as a background to the attitude that we have as a country on this question, I do not think it is inappropriate to refer to politics. This disease seems to have spread to political parties. More and more selection committees as regards my own side of the House and selection conferences, which I believe is the term used by hon. Members opposite, are now loth to choose men who are over 50, whatever their abilities.

Most men who come into the House nowadays are exceedingly young in political terms. I am pleased to see the Joint Parliamentary Secretary here today. He and I entered the House in 1959. He knows that there is this trend in politics, because at that time, in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), we were among the 30 youngest Members of the House. I must inform the hon. Gentlemen that the odds are getting a little longer now. I believe that we are now among the 100 youngest. This is symptomatic of the age in which we live. There is this climate of feeling throughout the country in all the professions and all the vocations.

There are a number of reasons for the difficulties when one considers the case of industry and of commerce. Managements in many cases seem to get to the stage when they think that only young people can provide what they want. Apart from their top executives, as time goes on managements tolerate their older employees, if they are good employees, and keep them in employment. If they are bad employees, often managements begin to bring about economies and as a result those who have been there longest are often among the first to go. This is a very bad trend.

Once a man is over 45 he usually finds that he is stuck with his old firm, unless he is a top executive with rather exceptional bargaining powers. Firms know this all too well. Men when they get over 50 are certainly vulnerable to any changes which are made. The professional man or the one in commerce or industry who has a disagreement with his employers or who resigns or who is dismissed, often for no particular reason of inefficiency, finds it increasingly difficult to get comparably paid employment when he seeks a job elsewhere.

When I first raised this question in the House during the lifetime of the last Government, I received a certain amount of publicity about it. I was amazed at the dozens of letters which came in from all parts of the country. Some of these letters were among the most moving I have received during my time as a Member of the House. There is something rather tragic about a man who finds that he has been cast on to the scrap heap and who believes he still has a good deal to contribute to the life of the country. The unemployed man, if he has good qualifications, particularly if he has a degree, has a better chance than the others, even though it is still extremely difficult. But a man who is just able, without any qualifications, immediately drops down to the lowest earning level and becomes just an ordinary clerk. He often has to take semi-skilled work—for instance, driving or as a sales representative—to earn money and keep body and soul together.

I was amazed from the correspondence I received at the diversity of those who are affected. They range from a research scientist to a marine captain and from an ex-colonial police chief to a registered medical practitioner.

One of the main reasons for this problem is the incidence of take-overs and mergers, which often have devastating results on the long-term employee. I give one example which was drawn to my attention, because it is symptomatic of so many others. This was a case in north London, a man who had worked his way up from the very bottom. He had been a junior clerk in 1924. By his own efforts he reached the status of office manager in 1942. In 1944 he became sales director of his company. In 1956, because of his excellence, he became deputy chairman. When the chairman and managing director died a year later he took over the top job. But in 1960 his company was taken over. It became one of a group of companies, and the group chairman took over the local chairmanship himself. This obviously caused strains and a year later, because they were not hitting it off, this individual had to resign under the new régime. He was unemployed for a while, and finally, in desperation, he became an outdoor sales representative for another company. So far as I know, he is still doing this kind of work today with no chance of getting back into the higher executive stream.

That is the top management case. But there are many comparable ones at the ordinary executive level and they grow all the time as there are more mergers and take-overs. This man wrote to me and said: Pressure ought to be brought to bear on company speculators who take over one business after another and by crushing them cause unemployment among older executives and other work people alike. Thus the experience and knowledge accumulated over many years is thrust on one side. I have found that the redundant professional man or executive becomes deeply disillusioned from his experience as he tries to get back into business life. However keen, conscientious or reliable he is, he finds the doors shut on him one by one as people learn of his age. In many cases really first-class men are turned away without proper consideration—men who would prove more effective than many of the younger ones who are holding down responsible positions in firms where older men are seeking work.

Several of these men have written to me and have offered, if I could find them the right sort of employment, to work two or three weeks without any pay at all in order to prove how good they are, but even this does not work. In any case, it certainly should not be tolerated. Many of these people feel extremely bitter when they undergo this experience. They feel that society is turning its back on them, and I believe they are right.

I will not weary the House with a long dissertation with quotes from the various letters that I have received, but there is one letter which can be used as an example and which came to me at the time when I was putting Parliamentary Questions on the subject. Here is one from an ex-superintendent of police in the Colonies. He said that he had held highly responsible administrative and command posts in that sphere in the service of the Crown until 1961, interspersed with commissioned service in the R.N.V.R. and the British Army. He continued: I have also had administrative, clerical, accountancy, stores and labour supervision experience. When finally I had to leave the Colonial Police Service, I registered with all the Government sponsored bureaux and agencies. Through the present unchecked policy, I have found them helpless and useless. They have sunk into the inertia of a seemingly insoluble problem. The (ex-Service) Officers' Association in Victoria Street did find me a clerical grade post of a particularly humdrum nature which I could not contemplate remaining in for the rest of my life. I do not think I am being unrealistic in wanting to be something better than a stock records clerk, with my experience and background. I was awarded a mention in dispatches for distinguished service during the anti-Eoka campaign. Here I am only fit to be a clerk, driver or storekeeper. This insult makes me morose, discontented, bitter and a malcontent through no fault of one's own. It also causes friction with one's family and I would gladly spend the rest of my life fighting it in a big way. I am only 52. One may say that here is a misfit, but this is typical of dozens of letters which I have received and, indeed, dozens of letters which have reached other hon. Members.

What is being done? There are one or two organisations which are trying hard to help people placed in this situation, but I am afraid it is an uphill struggle. There is the Over-45's Association which does very good work indeed. It is a nonprofit making concern and it has subscribers whose ages range from 45 to the late 70's. In status these people range from messengers to bank officials and chartered accountants. I understand that last year it found employment for some 270 people. But this is only scratching the surface. Thousands of people are involved. I am very glad that the Ministry of Labour has developed a free service, the Professional and Executive Register, and the Ministry has recently issued a very good leaflet which I think is deserving of wide circulation. I hope that when the Joint Parliamentary Secretary replies he will make some reference to it. I suspect that even the Professional and Executive Register comes up very severely against this age-barrier question and I am sure that this is something which will have to be borne seriously in mind.

It may be said, "It is all very well posing this problem. This is very gloomy. One feels extremely sorry for the people involved, but what are the solutions?" In my view, there is an overwhelming case for a top-level inquiry, a study of this very difficult social problem which can affect more and more people as life progresses. It is a problem which I posed to both Ministers of Labour during the last two Governments. It has so far been rejected. I hope there may be second thoughts because I believe that the information which can be collected on the subject will be extremely valuable, far more comprehensive than I could provide, and also it will be a valuable opportunity for an official-level inquiry to seek the proper co-operation and consultation from employers and professional organisations. Actions against mergers and take-overs also would contribute something, and I hope that when we get monopoly legislation this may be one particular facet which can be examined.

Extremely important in this whole issue is the question of the transferability of pensions. Many firms would be more anxious to take on men in middle age but cannot do so because of the pension complications. These men are too old to join other pension schemes and they have to remain put, where they are. If we ended pensions anomalies we would be helping to solve half of this problem as it comes before us today.

Above all, we require a new attitude on the part of all of us to this human problem. We are living longer as a race and remaining much more active until advanced years. A man of 50 or 55 looks upon himself as being in his prime, and so he is. Some of our greatest judges have been men of advanced years and so have been some of our statesmen, leading thinkers and administrators. There is no real substitute for experience and the deep understanding of human nature which always breeds tolerance, appreciation and, above all, utter reliability. These are the things which industry and commerce want. These are the things which I am afraid they turn their back on. Men of middle age have a great deal to contribute to the life of the nation. They feel at the moment that we are letting them down. We certainly must not do so.

3.55 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Norwood (Norwich, South)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) on having raised this subject. Few of us can have dealt with people in our constituencies without on occasion having come across the situation to which he refers. I should like, however, to extend the matter beyond the number and type of people to whom the hon. Member has referred. This is a problem which affects virtually every section of the community, and to an increasing extent.

There are a number of reasons for this. The special cases to which the hon. Member referred are people who, generally speaking, have been in senior employment, have taken higher salaries, and have had to meet a higher standard of performance than the average man or woman and therefore are people who could be expected to take a higher measure of risk. The hon. Member's reference to hon. Members bears on that point in some way. But the bulk of people affected by the difficulty of securing employment in their later years are those who, for one reason or another, can be described as the less competent and successful in industry and commerce.

These people, despite any trade union negotiations, are more likely to be made redundant and are less likely to be affected by arrangements entered into between unions and employers, and in small firms they are often without anyone to speak for them. Such a situation often arises after a man has been away from work owing to serious illness or injury. He may go back technically perfectly fit and able to work, but his absence from work places him at a disadvantage and often if there is redundancy or a changed organisation in the firm or in the department he is the one who is likely to go.

The first decisive matter here is the question of the attitude not of the community, as the hon. Member suggested, so much as of people who are employing others. Anyone who has had others working, for him has probably had experience of the fact that the temptation is to get the best possible person. People always want to employ those who are above average. This is a handicap which bears heavily against older men. One could describe this attitude perhaps as a subconscious forward policy. This is true in the motor industry and I can think back to the action of the British Motor Corporation in the middle of 1956 or 1957.

It is an attitude which the country may be able to afford for the sake of efficiency, but which it cannot afford from the point of view of humanity. Some people say that the answer is perfectly simple. There will be redundancy, but the answer is retraining. Whereas a man of my age, or that of the hon. Member for Brent-ford and Chiswick, can be retrained, it is not so easy to retrain a man of 55, particularly if he has had a year off work. It is very much harder for him to make the psychological adjustment than it is for a younger man.

What industry does, in effect, is to discharge on to the broad back of the community the responsibility for doing something which I think is done far too little in this country—programming the intake of people, internal employment planning. There are one or two interesting examples of this, but there is a tendency—unfortunately, it is probably growing—for firms to take in large numbers of young men without considering whether an adequate career or occupation will be offered to them.

I have seen instances where this has happened. It leads to various results. One gets in industrial concerns the same sort of thing as the classic army situation—the promotion bottleneck. It means a lack of internal planning of the people taken in and the jobs they will do.

A few of the nationalised industries and large private concerns are now doing this, but they are not typical of the standards of business management in the community as a whole. There are some notable and noble exceptions, such as the Civil Service practice of admitting people not to highly responsible jobs but to adequate jobs on a 40–60 intake. This is by public examination. Where one is employing substantial clerical labour as the Civil Service does, one no doubt contemplates increased use of mechanised accounting equipment, and so on, and it is very reasonable to have as part of the intake people in the older age group because, in the nature of things, as one ceases to need their services they will be retiring.

I emphasise and re-emphasise the hon. Gentleman's contention that the refusal of employers to make the contributions of qualified salaried people transferable out of pension schemes is absolutely unsatisfactory and in the long run against their own interests as well as against the interests of the country. I sometimes wonder whether some pension schemes were not constructed more to hold men in employment than to confer upon them any reasonable benefit.

4.2 p.m.

Mr. Merlyn Rees (Leeds, South)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) on raising this subject, which is extremely important. He told us about his experience when he raised the subject previously and about the number of letters that he received. Others of us who have not raised the subject in that way know from our postbag that there are examples in our constituencies which are dreadful, bearing in mind the contribution that a man or woman over 50 could make to the well-being of the community in industry and commerce.

I wish to raise one or two constituency matters which were brought to my notice in the last week or two. Before I do that, however, I would say that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Norwood), I believe that the subject of the employment problems of men and women over 50 go wider than just the executive types, a point of view expressed by the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick. It is not just a question of being thrown on the scrap heap from the point of view of employment when over the age of 50.

In the teaching profession, which I know most about, there is a tendency—it has grown up since the war—to accept that if one is not a headmaster by 35 one can give up, that there is no use in applying for a job over the age of 35. There is a terrible tendency, certainly beyond the age of 40, for a man to write himself off because he has not been one of the "whiz kids" and got somewhere early on.

This applies also to many labourers. I have some family experience in this respect. A man can earn a great deal in his early twenties because of his physical strength, but his income goes according to a graph in the form of an inverted U. The man reaches a point where he is earning a great deal, but he cannot do that beyond 40 because his income depends on his physical strength, and by the time he is 50 it is difficult for him to obtain employment. I have half a dozen constituents who, during the past year, have had trouble in obtaining employment because in their early years they took jobs which necessitated physical skill and this is all they know how to use. I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be able to assure us that the question of retraining is not far from the Government's mind.

The case with which I wish to deal arises from the question of pension schemes. There has been a great growth in occupational pension schemes in the last 20 years and I am sure that we are all pleased about it. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South said, when a man gets over the age of 50 he becomes an actuarial risk. That is what it boils down to. I had one case brought to my notice recently.

The man concerned is over the age of 50 and his case has, admittedly, been complicated by illness. He feels strongly that he will never work again. He is a skilled man of the executive type. When he was eventually sacked—that is what it came down to—he was given some of the contributions that he had paid into the pension scheme over the years but no contributions paid by the employer. He certainly did not get fair treatment as far as his own contributions were concerned.

As I have said, the case is complicated by illness but if this man had received his fair dues when he lost his employment he would have a much better income than he has now. He has brought to my attention the fact that large numbers of men, for various reasons, such as those mentioned by the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick—take-overs or the appointment of a new manager—lose their jobs when they are over the age of 50. Unless such a man has transference rights it is impossible for him to get a job in his own occupation.

Two weeks ago, I received a delegation from journalists in the West Riding. They feel that when they get over the age of 40 it is extremely difficult to move to another newspaper. I agree that there are peculiar happenings in the newspaper industry anyway, because of take-overs and other things which complicate the problems of journalists.

There is also the question of Government employees. If one is a teacher, and leaves the profession, one only gets one's own contribution. Surely the Government could give a lead in this respect. If the Government exhort private industry to do this in the national interest, then surely the Government have a remedy in their own hands in dealing with their own employees and with those in the determination of whose salaries they have considerable say.

I hope that my hon. Friend, in reply, will be able to tell us that the Government are giving more attention to transferability of pensions rights, because, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South insisted, this is at the core of the problem. It is the key to the door of doing something for men over 50.

Another point concerns retraining. I am not of the opinion that it is difficult to retrain a man over the age of 50 in industry. I believe that it is something that the Government could put over not only in industries under Government control, such as the docks, but also in private industry. During the last 20 years, the myth has grown up that a man is finished once he is over the age of 50. I am sure that the Government, through the technical colleges and the unions, could do a great deal through retraining schemes.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick on raising an urgent social matter for debate.

4.10 p.m.

Sir Ronald Russell (Wembley, South)

I rise briefly to comment on a point raised by the hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees), but, first, I add my congratulations to those already offered my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) on raising this vitally important subject. It is gratifying to note that a number of younger Members are showing interest in the subject.

What prompted me to rise was the fact that the hon. Member for Leeds, South mentioned the newspaper industry. That industry is setting a very good example, probably to a certain extent at a loss to itself, in keeping on older men who are rendered redundant by machines, particularly in the dispatch department of certain newspapers. That is very praiseworthy even though it may be uneconomic from the point of view of running newspapers, and I hope that it will continue.

I think that hon. Members have put their finger on a weak spot in raising this pensions issue, and I hope that the Minister will be able to find a solution to this vital problem.

4.11 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Richard Marsh)

It is an interesting commentary that with the exception of the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell), whom we gladly accept into the under-40 club as an honorary member at any time, all hon. Members taking part in the debate are under 40. There could scarcely be a better example of hon. Members looking after the interests of others.

Mr. Rees

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for putting me in that bracket, but I regret that I am no longer in that bracket. I must put that right for the sake of my family.

Mr. Marsh

I apologise. I was assuming that my hon. Friend had a rather aged and haggard appearance for reasons other than that of age.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Dudley Smith) and I have had many discussions on many different occasions because we both came into the House in 1959 and we have frequently discussed the position of younger persons in this respect. But it is an indication of the sense of insecurity which is brought about by advancing age that until today I had never heard him criticising selection conferences for a tendency to choose younger men!

The hon. Member raised an extremely important subject—far more important than is frequently realised. He has fought this campaign and made it a speciality for a long time in an effort to obtain a fairer deal for the over-fifties. He and other hon. Members have raised this matter on many occasions, and it is interesting to note that no one has ever disagreed with them. Everyone in the House, in outside industry and in the trade unions, is united whenever the plight is raised of men and women thrown on the industrial scrap heap for no other reason than their age. Everyone signifies his agreement on this subject—and then nothing happens until someone raises the issue again on the Adjournment.

This has been going on for some years and nothing so far has changed this almost frightening situation that thousands of people every year become too old at 50 and, indeed, as has been said in the debate, frequently too old at 40. Yet in the House some of the greatest figures have made their greatest contributions in their sixties and seventies. Indeed, when we consider that Sir Winston Churchill retired from premiership at the age of 81 and the fact that he would certainly have had considerable difficulty, had he been an ordinary person, in looking for alternative employment at the age of 50, one can see how stupid this position is.

How large is this problem? The figures show that there are about 6½ million people in this country in employment who are over the age of 50. They also show that when a man or woman in that age group loses his or her job—even when it is through no fault of the person concerned and irrespective of qualifications—the difficulties of placing him or her in another job become very great indeed. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Norwood) did not make this point, but following his comments I would stress that this does not apply only to professional and executive people. The difficulties for people over the age of 50, and frequently people over the age of 40, of trying to find another occupation are as great for manual workers as for professional and technical workers.

Of the men and boys unemployed for more than a year on 13th July last, 64 per cent. were aged 50 or over. At that age, the position becomes very serious. We talk, accurately, about a period of full employment, in the economist's sense, but, despite that, there were last July 94,789 people in this age group looking for jobs. Deliberately to refuse the right to work to people who have the ability and desire to do so is cruel in the extreme. No matter what provision the Welfare State makes in terms of financial benefit, it cannot compensate a man for the loss of independence which the refusal of work purely on the ground of age involves.

This is not just a social problem. Everyone feels sorry for these people. Everyone has a great deal of sympathy for them. But there is another aspect which is important to the nation as a whole. It is high time this country woke up to the fact that in its own interest it cannot afford to ignore the reservoir of skill and experience possessed by these people and not used by the nation.

It is frequently said—and it is one of the things which, if we say it frequently enough, no one takes any notice of—that in future people will have to get used to the fact that people will have more than one occupation in a lifetime and that they will have one, two and frequently three jobs in their working career. This is not just an interesting possibility; it is a statement of fact.

The whole industrial world is moving repidly into a period of constant technological change. We all recognise—we ascribe different reasons for it and I do not want to be controversial so close to a season of temporary cessation of hostilities between the two sides of the House—that this country has lagged behind in technological progress. It is the Government's intention to put this country back in the forefront of that progress. This means that there must be more mobility among all sections of the working population.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South mentioned the need for more manpower planning in industry and for industry to be able to plan its manpower requirements. The moment we proceed to examine the manpower requirements of industry, the more obvious it becomes that we cannot ignore large numbers of people who have both skill and experience, merely because they have reached some arbitrary age. There are thousands of young people entering industries and trades which will have changed out of all recognition before they are 40 years of age. In many cases they may have completely vanished before they are 40 years of age.

All the evidence is that as a result of all these changes—changes in the balance of population, the fact that there will be more older people but fewer younger people, partly due to the increase in the school leaving age and therefore, proportionately, a smaller work force—this country is already moving towards what could be a very serious shortage of manpower. In the 1930s the threat to living standards was unemployment. Today, there is a very real danger, or at least the possibility, that expansion in large and vital sections of industry could shudder to a halt merely because the men were not available.

The Ministry of Labour recently produced the first of its manpower surveys—there will be a number more to come—which shows very clearly that the proportion of people over 50 years of age to the rest of the population will have risen very substantially by 1970 and that this group, which is becoming more and more the under-privileged section in finding employment, is becoming the largest section of the labour market. With the smaller proportion of young people available, employers must be ready in their own interests to retain or engage older workers to meet their labour requirements.

Some firms, including a number of large ones in the hon. Member's constituency, have a very good record in this connection. I always regret that some of the interesting experiments in this field carried out by a small group of enlightened employers have not received more support or publicity. There is a good deal that industry itself can do in this way. There is a great deal which a small number of firms have done and are doing.

In 1949, a firm which is well known on both sides of the House introduced a scheme to maintain staff of over 70 years of age who wanted to go on working. In the beginning, the company was motivated primarily by a good sense of social activity and responsibility. The scheme is still working. Those people are capable of useful employment. They were taken off the production line, the workshop is self-supporting and they receive the normal engineering rates of pay. Those are people over 70 years of age in one firm. Other firms have schemes based on flat rates and piece rates which also appear to be self-supporting. The schemes are not a charitable gesture but are capable of operating as a commercial proposition.

Some firms retain their older workers within the normal production unit, but interview them from time to time to see whether they can be transferred within the firm to more suitable work. It is sheer laziness simply to get rid of a man when, if one examined the job carefully, it would probably be possible to find a useful production job that he could do. I am not, of course, suggesting that a skilled craftsman should be given a broom and be told to sweep the shop floor, but a serious look should be taken at what he can do.

O.E.C.D. has recently done a good deal of work in job redesigning and occupational training. "Job redesign" is a fearsome sort of title, but it is something which we could do a great deal more. It is remarkable when one examines examples of some of these practices, in America and Scandinavia in particular, as well as in this country, to see the extent to which older workers can be retained in their original jobs when a close look is taken at their working conditions and a few simple modifications made.

One of the things shown in the recent O.E.C.D. seminar on this subject was that when the conditions of older workers are examined to see how the job can be made more tolerable for them, in a number of instances changes are discovered which can be made for the benefit of the workers whatever their age. People were prepared to look at the job and say, "How can we change the job? Can we change the working conditions of the job to make it fit the man?"—without any loss of commercial viability.

Reference has been made by a number of hon. Members to the need to retrain older people. This, again, is something for which the Government cannot accept full responsibility. The Government are already doing a lot in this way. But employers, in their own interests—not to make a charitable gesture, but, as I keep stressing, in their own interests—should look at the extent to which they could retrain older workers.

I read recently of an interesting example in connection with this debate. We all know that there is a major shortage of good shorthand-typists, certainly in London and, indeed, throughout the whole country. It is a serious problem in many areas. We all know that there are large numbers of women who have had responsible positions in commerce and who have left to get married, as shorthand-typists always seem to do rapidly. Later, when their children have grown up, they decide that they want to return to work, although their speeds have all gone and they are not able to get a job in competition.

In New York City, a number of people have recently got together to retrain stenographers between the ages of 45 and 60. The interesting feature of that experiment was that more than 80 out of every 100 of those women were subsequently given good jobs as skilled shorthand-typists after a short period of retraining. There is really no need for employers or anybody else just to sit back and bemoan the shortage. I have shown with this one example of shorthand-typists that there is a vast reservoir of women who want jobs, and who have the ability to do them, and, as experience has shown, can quite easily be retrained in a brief time to do those jobs as well as anybody else.

We have to face it that one of the biggest problems in finding employment for the over-fifties is the simple prejudice of some employers who refuse even to interview a man above that age regardless of his qualifications. We have looked into this and it has become clear that what happens is that the exchanges receive requests for labour but with a very firm age limit placed on the candidates. As a result of this, instructions have been issued to all employment exchange staffs so that where an employer specifies an upper age limit efforts are made to persuade him to examine candidates purely on their merits. We have had some success already, and I was grateful to the hon. Member for what he was saying, as he did, about the Ministry's Professional and Executive Register.

Mr. Dudley Smith

Does what the hon. Member is saying apply to professional people as well as artisan and manual workers?

Mr. Marsh

I was just coming to that point. It certainly will apply to all of them. It is already working.

I wish that the Ministry's Professional and Executive Register were more widely known among people outside. It is at present placing more than 7,000 people a year in professional and executive jobs, and one-quarter of those people are in this upper age limit.

As I said, we have already had some successes with this register and I will give one example. A firm notified that it wanted a manager for a wholesale distributive appointment and specified quite firmly that the candidates should be young. In accordance with the instructions to which I referred just now, an approach was made to the employer to ask him whether he would be willing to interview another man whom the Ministry's staff had in mind. That candidate was sent, and he was 55 years old, and he was accepted by that employer, who previously had said he did not even want to see anybody of that age. That job, incidentally, was paid just over £2,000 a year, so it was a responsible job.

There is a number of these examples which could be given. Under the same procedure an office manager of 53 years of age was appointed and a technical sales correspondent of 59. It is absurdly wasteful that such people with these talents should be refused employment or that employers should refuse even to see them.

The problem of pensions and pension schemes is very serious indeed. It is quite clear that one of the things which makes some employers hesitate before taking on older men is that employees frequently arrive without pension rights from their previous employers, and if the new employer is to make any decent pension provision for them he fears he may face a very heavy cost indeed. That is why it is so important to make it possible for pension rights to be transferred when a worker changes his job. It is a very real problem indeed and the pension provisions are of real value. There are a number of reasons which—

Mr. Dudley Smith

In addition to that there are some firms whose pensions schemes do not permit them to employ men over a certain age.

Mr. Marsh

Yes. I want to make this point, because I think that it is very important.

There are a number of reasons why this loss of pension rights and this non-transferability of pension rights ought to be looked at very carefully anyhow, quite apart from this problem of older workers, but clearly it has a direct bearing on the employment of older men. The whole question of the preservation of pension rights has now been referred to a Committee of my right hon. Friend's National Joint Advisory Council for consideration, and for the production of some sort of workable solution of this problem.

Mr. Ridley

Can the hon. Gentleman tell us more about that reference? When might we have an answer to it? This is an important subject, and if the hon. Gentleman can tell us a little more about it we shall be grateful.

Mr. Marsh

My right hon. Friend referred to this when there was an exchange between him and the hon. Gentleman recently at Question Time. I think that it would be wrong to seek to put any deadline on this. It has been referred as a separate item to a Committee of the National Joint Advisory Council and we hope it will produce an answer as soon as possible. This is not a simple problem, nor one on which one would want to put a deadline.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick also referred to fixed retirement ages. Firms should re-examine their pension schemes in an effort to see whether impediments of this sort are essential. Any scheme must have a minimum age for retirement, but there is no reason why this should become a compulsory age of retirement. Indeed, there is no reason at all why we should accept that 65 is the usual age of retirement.

We can all think of a number of people who are quite useless in their thirties. Mr. Speaker, I shall not produce a list here, as it might cause trouble for me as well as for you. I think that it is equally obvious that we can produce a list of people who make enormous contributions when in their sixties and seventies. I think that we ought to look at the way in which we have begun to accept that there is something magical about the figure of 65. If men are going to be dismissed, they ought to be dismissed because they cannot do the job for one reason and another, and not merely because they are 65.

The whole problem of older workers must have much wider attention and consideration than it has had so far. My right hon. Friend, having dealt with this other point, also proposes to discuss this whole question of older workers with leading employers and trade unionists through the N.J.A.C. I hope that this examination will suggest additional means of dealing with this problem. Everybody on both sides of the House is in favour of doing something about it.

By his campaign the hon. Gentleman has highlighted the problem, but I hope that this debate will have stimulated a demand from the Press, from the politicians, from the public, and indeed from everybody else, to try to put an end to the frustration and unfairness meted out to large numbers of ordinary hardworking people whose only crime—and I say crime because they pay a very high penalty indeed—is that they seek employment after their 50th birthday.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven ,minutes to Five o'clock, till Tuesday, 19th January, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 17th December.