Older Workers in the Nursing and Midwifery Profession: Will They Stay or Will They Go?

Abstract

One of the challenges posed by increased life expectancy is to ensure the financial sustainability of pension provisions. In response to these demographic changes, the UK government has taken three major policy steps. The first has been to remove mandatory retirement in 2011, unless the need to maintain a contractual retirement age can be objectively justified by an employer (see Manfredi and Vickers at Chap. 4 and Ashtiany at Chap. 14). The second relates to pension arrangements with the introduction of a system where employees will be automatically enrolled in a pension scheme unless they decide to opt out of it, and the third to carry out reforms of public sector pensions. With regard to the latter, an Independent Public Service Pensions Commission was set up. In 2011, it published a report that recommended a change to public sector pensions that addresses the balance between, on the one hand, the need to reward workers’ loyalty and, on the other hand, to secure ‘value for money’ for taxpayers. One of the main implications of these changes for the UK National Health Service (NHS) is that, from 2015, nurses will no longer have the option of retiring at the age of 55. Members of the NHS Pension Scheme will be entitled to draw their pension without reduction only once they have reached the state pension age (SPA), which will be linked to their birth date. For example, the SPA for people born between 1954 and 1960 will be the age of 66, while for those born between 1961 and 1977 will be 67; and these changes are intended to be reviewed and kept in line with increased life expectancy.