What steps he plans to take to encourage and help older workers into employment.

My hon. Friend has a great interest in this subject, not least as secretary of the all-party group on ageing and older people. Our strategy paper published recently, called "Opportunity Age—Meeting the challenges of ageing in the 21st century", confirmed our commitment to increasing the employment rate of older people, and our aspiration to move towards an 80 per cent. overall employment rate. Such an employment rate is an international ambition, and will include a million more older workers. In addition to our range of back-to-work help, which includes the new deal 50-plus, we are piloting special support through pathways to work for people claiming incapacity benefit, almost half of whom are over 50.

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, but are the Government prepared to bring in measures to enable people to defer their state pension and continue working? Many people would like that choice.

One of the challenges in the early part of this century is to do away with uniform retirement ages, which treat us all as a mass, rather than as individuals. Changes to state pension can help in that direction. In future, there will be a choice. At the right age people can choose to take their state pension there and then, and many will want to do that, but there is an improved accrual rate for state pension increments, which would mean that if one deferred for five years, one could choose an increase in state pension of around 50 per cent., which would take the full basic state pension to about £125 in current terms per week, or one could take a lump sum of around £25,000. That is the kind of choice that we need to bring into state pensions, and we are doing just that.

Is it not the case that the Government do not like older workers very much? That was the message that was given clearly to public sector workers in the health service and in education, to the point that they were brought to the brink of a national strike two weeks ago. Will the Minister explain why the Government's much trumpeted, much vaunted new deal for the over-50s does not apply for the first six months, when it would do more good than at any other time?

Experience shows that in the first few months of being unemployed, people often find work themselves. Many of the new deals have to focus on those who have been out of work for a longer time. The good news is that the employment rate among those between 50 and state pension age is increasing, and at a faster rate than the overall employment rate—but we are not complacent. Too many people who want to work after 50 are not yet able to do so, and we are determined that they should be able to. That is one of the reasons why we will outlaw age discrimination for next year—which may be good news for some in the House.

Most people can look forward to spending a third of their adult life over the age of 65, and therefore as pensioners. Is it not important that each and every one of them should have some dignity and financial security in their working life, so that they can work, receive a pension and undertake voluntary work and a range of other activities in that important one third of their adult life that they will probably spend as pensioners?

I recognise, sadly, that my hon. Friend too is about to retire—I will not go on too much in this way, Mr. Speaker, or the cream cakes will come round and you will rule that out of order. However, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's service. We are seeing how demographic politics will increasingly become a feature of democratic politics. The changing life cycle—whereby people will be preparing for work for 20 or 25 years in education, and also be retired for 20 years, on average, but in some cases for 30 or more years—is a challenge to the House. We need to make sure that that period of so-called old age and retirement is an active one, with educational opportunities, employment opportunities for those who want to move back to the labour market, and opportunities for service to the community.

What advice or assistance can my hon. Friend offer older workers whose employment is threatened simply for expressing a point of view that is inconsistent with that of their colleagues?

The rights of workers in that situation, and their choice of—to use a term from psychology—"fight or flight", is crucial. We have always taken individual employment rights more seriously than have the Opposition, which is why, whatever we might say, some of us are feeling rather more secure than some colleagues on the Opposition Benches.