State pension age warning as Britons in manual jobs may have to work longer | Personal Finance | Finance

Baroness Kate Hoey has warned it’s “quite awful” for people to suddenly discover they will have to wait longer to claim their state pension after working all their lives. She said this can be particularly devastating news for those who have worked in manual labour and who may not want to work into their later years as others can.

The former Home Office minister appeared on TalkTV this morning as the Government is set to make an announcement about the state pension age today.

The Government is expected to announce plans to bring forward the move to 68 is to be shelved.

The current state pension age is 66 for both men and women with plans in place for this to gradually increase to 67 and 68.

Baroness Hoey told presenter Mike Graham: “You meet people who are past retiring age and are still actually very, very busy.

“There’s no doubt about it, people are living longer, therefore there is a tendency for them to be able to work on.

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“As long as you have that choice that you can still work on and you don’t have to retire.

“I think for a lot of people who have worked very, very hard, particularly in manual jobs, that are probably in many ways not as healthy as some of our jobs have been, I think it is quite awful to suddenly discover that you’re in that line, where you’re going to be the group that’s going to have to work on to get your state pension, which you’ve paid for right throughout your life.”

Baroness Hoey said raising the state pension age is a “very difficult issue” for the Government to agree on.

She said: “Usually what people say is very glibly, if you could just get cross-party support, if we can get all the political parties to sign up to it, then it would be much easier.

“But you won’t get that on something like the pension age.”

Becky O’Connor, director of public affairs at PensionBee, recently said bringing forward the increase would have been very unpopular.

She said: “An earlier increase to the state pension age from 67 to 68 would have gone down like a lead balloon.

“It would have looked especially punishing for people on lower incomes, so hot on the heels after the Government removed the lifetime allowance limit for people with larger pension pots and increased the annual allowance in the Budget.

“Life expectancy has not been rising, so the biggest justification for increasing the state pension age just wasn’t there.

“The state pension age is still going to rise to 68, but it looks like this is now more likely to be according to the previous timetable rather than a new accelerated one.”