Age Discrimination (Hansard, 17 March 2003)

§ Mr. McCartney

We have made a pledge to tackle age discrimination and we are committed to introducing age legislation covering employment, vocational training and guidance by 2006.

Our current Pensions Green Paper 'Simplicity, security and choice: Working and saving for retirement' reinforces our commitment to extend employment opportunities for people with a range of proposals including providing extra back to work help for over 50s, piloting local agents in the business community to help employers to realise the benefits of recruiting and retaining older workers, and a number of changes to tax and pension rules which will give individuals more choice and opportunity to stay in work longer. We have also made it clear that in the forthcoming age legislation compulsory retirement ages are likely to be unlawful, unless employers can show they are objectively justified. Employers will therefore need to adopt more flexible approaches to retirement.

We are already encouraging employers to adopt nonageist employment practices through our Age Positive Campaign. The campaign raises employers' awareness of the business benefits of an age diverse workforce and encourages a flexible approach to retirement to open up choice and opportunity for individuals to stay in work longer.

In 1999, we published the Code of Practice on Age Diversity in Employment which sets out the standards for non-ageist approaches to recruitment, training, promotion, redundancy and retirement. The code was developed with leading organisations including the CBI, TUC, the Employers Forum on Age and Age Concern. Evaluation shows that from 1999 to 2001 the number of companies using age in recruitment had already fallen from 27 per cent. to 13 per cent. and the number of companies having a policy against employing older workers had dropped from 14 per cent to 7 per cent.

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Since then we have continued to promote the business case for recruiting, training and retaining older workers through the Age Positive campaign, workshops for smaller businesses, and publications including 'Good Practice in the Recruitment and Retention of Older Workers' (December 2001), 'Flexible Retirement: A Snapshot of Large Employers' Initiatives' (June 2002) and during Age Positive week, in December 2002 we published 'Age Diversity at Work: a practical guide for business'. The campaign has been attracting considerable media coverage and about 30,000 visits a month to the Age Positive website www.agepositive.gov.uk.

From spring 1997 to spring 2002, our policies have helped increase the employment rate for people aged 50 to state pension age from over 64 per cent. to over 68 per cent. with nearly 900,000 more people aged 50 and over in work. This increase has been faster than the increase in the overall employment rate. Under New Deal 50 plus 92,000 people aged over 50 have moved off benefits and gone back to work from April 2000 to December 2002, claiming the programme's cash employment credit. We will build on this support to further increase the employment rate of older workers who have a wealth of skills and experience that can benefit individual businesses and the economy as a whole.