I am now in my 61st year, haven’t worked for more than two years and have stopped applying for jobs (‘I feel invisible’: over-50s reveal harsh realities of trying to get a job, 17 September). The bulk of my career was as an advice worker, specialising in debt, housing and energy advice.
Some years ago I worked with a client in her late 50s who had been a hospital cleaner. She had expected to retire earlier, but the changes to women’s state pension age meant that she faced several more years before retirement. She could no longer do the physical work of cleaning, yet starting a new career while managing her physical health seemed a daunting prospect. At the time I was looking at this situation from the other side of the desk. Now my perspective is rather different.
There quite rightly needs to be an emphasis on young people who are out of work, but I have felt for some time that there also needs to be an alternative route for people who find themselves out of work when they are approaching state pension age. Our current social security and pensions system has roots in the reforms of the early 20th century, developed through the Beveridge report of 1942 and the postwar reforms of the Attlee government.
Since then, the system has been adapted and tweaked many times. But perhaps we have reached the point where tweaking isn’t enough. What we need is Beveridge for the 21st century.
Peter Wade
Leeds
