David Cameron on raising the retirement age – Radio 4

Evan Davies: Right now we just want to be clear on some of the details because as you will know women’s state pension age is not going to be 65 in 2016, it’s going to be 63 in 2016, it gradually rises thereafter. So you’re not I assume planning to take women straight from 63 to 66 in 7 years time?

David Cameron: No that’s not what we’re proposing, what we’re proposing is this independent person to head a review to look at not just is 2016 the right year, that would be the earliest we could rise it, but also how you sync together the women’s state pension age and the man’s state pension age into the future so that’s the reason. This is a big announcement, it’s an announcement for the future, it’s important to get it right, I’d like to build all party support for it if that’s possible and I think this is exactly the sort of issue that this independent review should look at.

ED: I’m sorry, I had understood last night this was a proposal but actually it’s a review that you’re planning?

DC: We’re saying that we believe, the Conservative party believes that we should instead of this happening at 2026 it should happen at the earliest at 2016 but sometime in that decade, earliest 2016, but that’s what we’d, like to see. We’ll be asking an independent review to look at the issues around that and to make proposals but it’s, yes, we believe it needs to happen.

ED: Well, but you briefed, that it was going to save £13 billion a year, I mean how can you put a figure on it if you don’t know what the proposal is yet?

DC: Well what we know is that every, every 18 months of a different age raises £20 billion so one year raises £13 billion so it is £13 billion from the year in which you do it, it’s an important saving…

ED: But that would include women at 66 would it or, would that be from 64?

DC: That figure I believe actually applies to just raising the state pension age for men from 65 to 66 but as I say…

ED: So it would be more if you included woman rising from 63 to 64?

DC: One of the reasons for looking at this issue through a review is there are complexities but I think the big step to take is the step we’re taking today which is to say the previous agreement we all had that 2026 was the right year, it is not ambitious enough, we need to go further.