With all the political parties warming to abolition of the default retirement age (DRA) sooner or later. I make no apologies for returning now to this subject. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills review of the said DRA is bubbling along nicely, though I believe there will be no result this side of the election.

But hands up who has been thinking of what might emerge if and when the DRA is abolished or raised? Will all those employers so keen to see the backs of people once they have clocked up 65 years on the planet, no longer show them the door? I think not!

A recent survey by Age UK found more than 100,000 people were forced to retire last year. On the other hand, the Engineering Employers Federation insists that most people who want to work on, are being allowed to do so.

There seems no consensus on the scale of the problem of forced retirement. I would guess this is in part because most people simply acquiesce when told it is time to go. A good number may not even know they can ask to stay.

More people are working on. Many may be happy to retire. Fair enough, but you can’t dismiss a number like 100,000 unless you rubbish the whole Age UK survey – which you can’t.

So do we really believe forced retirement will be thrown into the garbage bin of bad old practices, as soon as we have got rid of the default retirement age? Not likely! Employers will want to make continued working, conditional on maintained performance. Providing people are treated equitably and sensibly, this is an unexceptionable position.

So talk to employers and HR people right now and you find them interested in the issue of What comes after the DRA? Michael Foster MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Government Equalities Office,  has been pondering this question too.

Foster came along to a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Intergenerational Futures last week to respond to an inquiry report on intergenerational equity in employment. One of the inquiry’s recommendations had (unsurprisingly) been that the DRA should be scrapped. Foster did not demur.

But in a thinly attended meeting in Westminster, he floated the idea that if and when mandatory retirement has been abolished, there would need to be a “mechanism of some kind” to make it alright for employers to talk to their employees about retirement plans.

Excuse me; I wasn’t aware that any such mechanism was needed for employers and employees to talk to one another. Why should Foster (an Employment lawyer by training) imagine one was necessary? Not every employer has appraisal interviews and performance reviews, but, in my experience, most hold conversations with their workers as and when they need to, without trouble.

Foster’s thinking seems to have been influenced by feedback from employers on the procedure which gives employees approaching retirement the right to request to work on beyond the DRA.

On the whole, employers seem to think this is working well, which is perhaps not surprising, given that the ‘right’ is currently couched in distinctly lop-sided terms.

Under current arrangements, employers simply have a duty to consider requests to work on, whilst retaining absolute discretion on which requests to accept. They have no obligation to provide reasons when they turn down requests to remain, no matter how strong the case put forward.

So it is a fly picker’s charter. This person may be liked, and favoured whilst that person may have committed some trivial offense and deemed less deserving. No one can complain.

This is what the Engineering Employers Federation and a few other bodies would like to keep. They know the writing is on the wall regarding the present default retirement age, so they have chosen this as their fall back strategy

Some employers may indeed be operating the procedure sensibly, asking all the right questions, including exploring alternative patterns of working that may suit the 65+ worker. This is what Foster has in mind. Others, I am afraid, regard it as a convenient break point in the contract.

In any case, even within a given firm, there is a lack of consistency in the way requests are dealt with. Research by Matt Flynn at the University of Middlesex, has shown that in discharging their duties to consider, managers are overwhelmingly working without criteria or yardsticks to measure applications from individuals eager to remain at work.

‘Retirement’ is what it is called, but many companies have been using compulsory retirements to reduce the need for redundancies. One can understand their thinking, but the individual who expected to continue working and is asked instead to ‘retire’, will not receive a redundancy payment unless the employer offers one out of kindness.

Foster’s idea is that once the DRA is gone, at a given age, (say 70) there would be a review of some kind. Employers would be able to ask the employee if he or she needs flexible working of some form, review their needs, and assess their performance. It would be like applying for a driving licence or MOT, as Foster described it.

No doubt some employees would be quietly dispatched whilst others would be allowed to carry on. Foster argues that reasonable adjustments to the working environment or job role might be identified from such discussion.

He believes this approach is preferable to employees being dismissed on capability grounds although, of course, if they were, they would be able to bring employment tribunal claims asserting their enduring value as employees.

Under Foster’s mechanism’, the case may be made for the employee to continue working on reduced hours or in a different capacity. And who is to say that properly handled, some good would not come out of such arrangements?

My problem however, is that to institute such a system for 70 year old workers would be a bit like vet’s inspection of the herd prior to the knacker’s lorry arriving. The whole thing would be about testing the capability of workers and their fitness to continue. The hurdle gate would be held open, this way or that way, accordingly. It would become, I fear, a demeaning process.

A better idea would be to encourage employers to talk regularly about career development plans to all employees, not just those close to retirement age. Looking to the future and making plans could be much more beneficial in a genuine, practical way. 

But it is interesting that the talk is starting. There will doubtless be more mileage in this before solutions are put forward. My view, for what it is worth, is that aside from the DRA itself, current employment law and the spreading of good practice, really ought to be enough.

But how odd it would be, if on this issue, the CBI and employers turned out to be on the side of more employment regulation. I wouldn’t bet against it.