Political commentator Nigel Nelson has hit out at employers over the possible raising of state pension age in a passionate GB News rant.
It comes amid reports suggesting the retirement age will have to rise to 71 for middle-aged workers across the UK.
Growing life expectancy and falling birthrates are cited as factors for the rise.
The UK pension age of 66 is set to rise to 67 between May 2026 and March 2028. From 2044, it is expected to rise to 68.
Nigel Nelson spoke about the potential raising of the retirement age
GB NEWS
GB News’s Senior Political Commentator Nigel Nelson said laws should be introduced to stop employers getting rid of older workers.
“There’s this huge gap that exists between people being laid off from the jobs they’ve had for ages and then having to wait for a pension”, he said.
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State pension age will rise to 67 by 2028 then it will further increase to 68 GETTY“The default pension age where a company could retire you at 65, that’s gone. They now make people redundant instead.
“If they’ve got to wait years for a pension, that’s a real problem.”
He went on to discuss how the two parties may go about handling the problem.
“Politicians have kicked this into the long grass”, Bev Turner waded in to comment.
“I think a lot of individuals do this also when it comes to our pension age. It’s not necessarily something we sit around thinking about or planning for”, she added.
The UK state pension age will need to increase to 70 or 71 by 2050 to keep up with the longer life expectancy and maintain the number of workers per retiree, according to a think thank.
The pressures for increases to state pension were stalled slightly during the austerity years and the Covid pandemic.
Despite this, there is pressure to increase it to 68 or 69 before 2027, according to the International Longevity Centre (ILC).
The report found workers exiting the workforce long before they reach state pension age reduce the funding available to pay for the state pension, with ill health being one of the key reasons for this.
While a solution is to enable people to work for longer, the think-tank warned this is challenging, as research found that by age 70, only 50 per cent of adults are disability-free and able to work.