Response to Lord Bichard's comments
Published on 24 October 2012 11:30 AM
Responding to Lord Bichard's comments today, Age Cymru's Victoria Lloyd, Director of Influencing said:
"We must not forget that retirement is a vastly different experience depending on your personal circumstances. 40% of all people over 65 have a serious longstanding illness and over 100,000 of our pensioners live in poverty. For many of those, retirement can be an unrelenting struggle of trying to survive on a low income in poor health.
Older people already make a vast contribution to our society with nearly a million older people across the UK providing unpaid care to family or friends saving the state millions of pounds. Nearly a third of working age parents rely on grandparents to provide childcare. Significant numbers of people in Wales are now working past the traditional retirement age either because they want to or because they can't afford to retire
Part of this hugely positive role in society is that a third of people aged between 65 and 74 volunteer, a percentage that only drops slightly for the over 75s."