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WORK AND PENSIONS
Opportunity Age
The Minister for Pensions (Malcolm Wicks): Today we are breaking new ground by publishing, for the first time, a comprehensive strategy for an ageing society, entitled "Opportunity Age—Meeting the challenges of ageing in the 21st century".
British people are living much longer and on the whole healthier lives. The evidence points to a continuation of that trend. The strategy plans ahead for the changes this will bring and gives a lead to the broad partnership we need to bring change about.
The strategy complements the Government's pension principles and the work of the Pensions Commission, by focusing on other aspects of economic and social life affected by demographic change: employment, healthier and more active ageing, and the services—health, care and housing—which an ageing society demands.
The Government see population ageing as an opportunity to be seized to raise our already impressive level of employment, engage older people in contributing to society actively, and to transform public services for older people to extend choice and support independence.
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Our people, firms and partners in local authorities and the voluntary sector will need to adapt. The task of Government through this strategy is to identify the issues and the outcomes we want, give a lead, invest sustainably in support, where needed, and co-ordinate action effectively.
It reports progress to date—on higher employment levels among the over-50s, on reducing pensioner poverty, on better access to more effective healthcare delivered by our investment in the National Health Service. And it plans ahead by setting out a programme of Government action to promote wider change in society.
We are striving for change in employment, by setting a world-leading aspiration of an 80 per cent employment rate, so that we provide opportunities for people to sustain and extend their working lives by choice. We will legislate to consign age discrimination in the workplace to history; we will support inactive and unemployed older people so that they find jobs; we will enable working people to improve their skills and plan their later careers, retirement and pension options; we will extend opportunities for people to combine work and caring responsibilities.
We are promoting change, to support active ageing in communities which respect age and diversity: we will remove barriers which can prevent older people from taking up opportunities to learn, enjoy leisure activity or to contribute through volunteering. We will extend free local public transport. We will encourage local authorities to engage with older people so that their needs are built into the priorities of local communities.
We are delivering change, to extend independence and choice in the way we deliver the support services older people need: we will offer an individual budget which older people will be able to use to buy in their care package, exercising real control like any customer. We believe that independence can be sustained even when infirmity sets in. We will pilot this new approach and also include Supporting People funding in nine of these pilots up to a maximum of 1 per cent. of each authority's annual allocation for that programme.
And through our link-age programme, we will build over time, an integrated home visiting service which can offer older people a personal care, benefit, heating and housing check up, so they receive their full entitlement to support for independent living at home.
Part of this strategy will be consultative. We are seeking views on the outcomes, and indicators assess progress towards improved quality of life. We will involve a wide range of central and local government partners and voluntary bodies in regular assessments. Consultation will finish on 17 July 2005.
We look forward with optimism to a future without ageism and in which older people are respected members of our communities contributing even more than they do now to society. Our strategy sets a sustainable path.