The House of Lords Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change has warned that the government is “woefully under-prepared” to deal with Britain’s rapidly ageing population and has called for a White Paper to be published before the next election, setting out how society needs to prepare to combat this issue.

A House of Lords inquiry found that England will experience a 50 per cent rise in the number of people aged 65 and over between 2010 and 2030 and there is expected to be a 100 per cent increase in those aged 85 and over in the same period. As a result, the Committee has stated that the next political party in power should within six months of being elected, establish two cross-party commissions to respond to the ageing society.

The Committee also stated that people should be able to work later, if they wish, often in part-time work.

Committee chairman Lord Filkin said: “As a country we are not prepared for the rapid ageing of our population. The amazing gift of longer life is to be welcomed, but our society and politicians need to address the implications, and the changes needed to attitudes, policies and services so people are best able to benefit from it. We need government to support the choices each of us makes for our longer lives: people must be better informed and enabled to get a better idea of the income they may get in retirement from their pension savings.

“All political parties should be expected to consider the wider implications of the ageing society in their manifestos for the 2015 election.”

Barnett Waddingham consultant Malcolm McLean commented: “With regards to pensions, the present workplace auto-enrolment programme now underway has been a long time in the making and even now may be too little too late. This needs to form part of any wider review being contemplated to ensure that the level of pension provision the programme is likely to produce will be adequate to face up to the scale of the problem. The question of compulsion and/or withdrawing the ability of individuals to opt-out of the programme also needs to be urgently addressed."

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