Early retirees: should they get on their bikes?

Although for decades he was greeted by cries of “on your bike” wherever he went, Norman Tebbit never told anyone to get on a bike, said John Elledge in The New Statesman. He merely recalled, at the Tory conference in 1981, that during the Depression, his father had pedalled around the country in search of work. It was a clever story, designed to suggest that an unemployment problem created by structural forces (partly of his government’s making) was the result of individual inertia.

Now, 41 years on, the Tories are playing a similar trick – only this time, they really are suggesting that people should get on their bikes.

On a visit to the HQ of Deliveroo last week, Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Minister, opined that the food delivery firm offered “great opportunities” that older economically inactive workers “might not otherwise have thought of”. Such jobs, he added, could also “help with fitness”.

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‘Stride won’t be jumping on a bike’

To be fair to Stride, his idea addresses two real problems: older people struggling to make ends meet in a cost-of-living crisis, and a labour market crying out for workers. But is it any kind of solution?

One thing we do know, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, is that when Stride, 61, leaves public service, he won’t be jumping on a bike with an insulated rucksack on his back. He will have a choice of directorships to supplement his index-linked pension. And you do wonder how many older people would cope with Deliveroo jobs, said Harry Wallop in The Times. I did a stint for the firm in 2016. The pay wasn’t terrible (it worked out at £11.20 an hour), but the work was unreliable (shifts were limited) and physically demanding: cycling in traffic in the rain, sometimes climbing eight flights of stairs to deliver an order, is not easy.

‘Half a taxpayer better than none’

Delivery work won’t suit everyone, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction. But the fact remains that our economic prosperity depends on people working, and currently, 3,547,000 people aged 50 to 64 are economically inactive (27% of that age group). Of those, 1.6 million are long-term sick – 20% more than three years ago. Of the rest, some will be well off and not wanting paid work, but research has found that half of those who dropped out during the pandemic are struggling financially.

These people may be ready to “unretire”, said The Times: but to persuade them in large numbers will require there to be the right kinds of job. Firms will have to offer older workers flexible terms and a degree of respect. The Government, too, needs to be inventive. It might, say, devise tax incentives for people to stay in work or return to lower-paid work. “Half a taxpayer is better than none.”