Harriet Harman praises ‘wellderly’ with move to axe retirement at 65

Harriet Harman outside No10 last week
12 April 2012

Harriet Harman paid tribute to Britain's "wellderly" today as she unveiled moves to scrap the compulsory retirement age.

The Equalities Minister defended the record number of pensioners who are still working and stepped up her campaign against ageism.

Ms Harman rounded on cosmetics giant Olay for an advertisement which airbrushed signs of ageing from model Twiggy.

Speaking at an Age Concern/Help the Aged conference, Ms Harman said the "well elderly" — older people who are fit and healthy and want to work beyond the age of 65 — were vital to the country's economic future.

In what she called a "massive public policy change", the 59-year-old minister said the Government wanted to give workers the right to request that they stay on beyond the current age limit.

Britons would not be forced to work beyond 65 but they would have the option to keep working into their seventies or even eighties.

Ms Harman said: "We have to understand that we now have a new cohort of well, active, healthy older people. The role that they play in their families, in the economy and in society must be recognised. We must recognise the emergence of the wellderly'."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in