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03 February 2012 / Catherine Barnard , Simon Deakin
Issue: 7499 / Categories: Opinion , Employment
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Ahead of the game?

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Abolishing the DRA has the potential to inflict long-term damage to UK Plc: Catherine Barnard & Simon Deakin

Reforming the funding of pensions and raising retirement age have been identified as two key ways of addressing the debt crisis. From this point of view, the UK is ahead of the game: last October the statutory default retirement age (DRA) of 65 disappeared for good. Employees can carry on working until they drop, the years in which they receive their pension will (probably) reduce, and they will carry on paying taxes and spending money, all of which is good for the economy. Or is it? We believe that the overnight abolition of the statutory DRA has the potential to cause serious damage to the economy: to the 20% of young people without jobs, to those looking for promotion, and for employers who will now have to fall back on performance management to remove older staff.

Performance management is costly at a number of levels. Many small (and quite a lot of large) businesses

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