Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)

My Lords, the report we are discussing was completed before I joined the Economic Affairs Committee. Therefore, I need feel no embarrassment in congratulating the committee on its work. It is prescient, timely and, to put it bluntly, a stark warning to this and future Governments that they will ignore at their peril. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, summarised it very well. The UK is ageing rapidly—a sign of success. Longer life expectancy is a success, but falling birth rates mean that older people will form a larger share of the population. This will cause critical problems. This is on top of the problems of exponential growth of public expenditure and welfare that we already have. The noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Lamont, pointed to a crucial paragraph. I will not repeat the statistics, but it illustrated just how far we will have to go to meet the challenges by 2074—roughly the next 50 years. If we do not meet those challenges, we will be in a crisis long before that. I believe this is a challenge, laid out in this report, that no responsible Government can refuse to recognise. There is another warning. As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, simply increasing the state pension age will not cut the mustard; it will not provide the means to address the challenge the committee outlined. A greater priority should be helping people in their 50s and 60s remain in or return to employment, but this in turn requires better health and social care, flexible working, reduced age discrimination—something to bear in mind next week when we discuss the report from the Retirement and Participation Committee—and opportunities for lifelong learning and retraining. All these are outlined in this report, and I urge the Government to take them most seriously. If I have one disappointment, it is that the report did not more forthrightly consider and challenge the triple lock. I believe that is essential. Absent that analysis in the report, we have to rely on the good services of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, who has been forthright on it. I agree entirely with him. That issue would undoubtedly have to be part of the deliberations of the recommended Cabinet sub-committee and overarching strategy. Overall, the message is simple: the UK needs to prepare now. It is already later than it should be to start preparations. We need to treat longer lives as an opportunity rather than a burden. In the months and years to come, the Government cannot say that they were not warned.