Stephen Bush (Opinion, FT Weekend, March 8) draws attention to the rising numbers of people claiming health-related benefits. Unlike many commentators, he acknowledges that the increase in state pension age has contributed to this. However he underestimates the impact of raising the women’s state pension age from 60 to 66 years, by assuming the increased need for health-related benefits is limited to “those two or three years below the new state pension age”.
This ignores the difference in healthy life expectancies of nearly two decades, between those living in the most and the least deprived areas. Starting in their fifties, women living in the former will spend a third of their shorter lives in poor health and only five years in retirement. The length of time they may now have to combine paid employment with care of a co-resident spouse or partner has doubled since 2010.
Nevertheless, the over-fifties, the majority of whom are older women, accounted for 73 per cent of the increase in employment in the previous decade. Altogether 28 per cent of the social care workforce is aged over 55 years. Care workers now comprise the largest number (460,000) of female night workers. Night work is bad for health.
The rise in women’s state pension age to 65 reduced expenditure on the state pension by a total of £77bn between 2010 and 2020 but investment in social care and community health services was cut. Carers Allowance (CA) remains one of the lowest benefits in the system. With its punitive and cliff-edge earnings rule and complex interactions with other benefits, 30 per cent of those entitled to CA are ineligible for it.
The introduction of five days’ unpaid care leave in 2024 should be replaced by two or three weeks’ paid leave to enable willing family or close friends to care for someone ready to be discharged from hospital, for example.
During Covid, health and social care workers were clapped by an appreciative public. The industrial injuries advisory council, an independent scientific advisory body, has since proposed that Covid be recognised as an industrial disease with respect to health and social care workers. A response from the government is still awaited.
It is estimated that it would take 4mn paid care workers to replace all unpaid care worth £162bn a year — an increase of 29 per cent since 2011. A successful search for a benefit in which care and carers are visible and valued could be a fruitful one leading to a healthier society.
Hilary Land
Emerita Professor of Family policy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
