Pensions expert Lord Turner questions policy

Feb 8 2010 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

The Newcastle research is among other work which suggest that longer life expectancy was not bringing with it a greater period of dependency and serious ill-health.

Lord Turner said this increase in life expectancy would offset any fears that people were losing out on retirement by working longer.

And with a warning that he held no strong views on immigration, Lord Turner said governments had to realise this country could survive without population increase.

He said: “It is vitally important now that we change the nature of the debate around ageing. The idea there is a crisis really is quite perverse.

“Humans are getting more years of life and if we are not clever enough to see this as a positive thing then we are in real trouble.

He added: “So, despite this, we get people saying things like an ageing UK needs seven million immigrants to survive. All this comes from the belief we can’t change the birth rate, but we have to address the pensions problem.

“I don’t agree with that. I want to stress I will make no comment whatsoever on all the other immigration issues.

“From a completely personal view I don’t actually care what the colour of our population is and I’d like to be generous to asylum seekers, but on purely demographic terms, I don’t think there is a an argument to say we need more immigrants. I think we need more babies, I think stabilisation is a good thing.”