:00:10. > :00:13.hesitate. That floors me. Tonight on Newsnight Scotland...
:00:13. > :00:18.Our population may be at it's highest ever level, but it is also
:00:19. > :00:26.aging fast. So do we have the money and the ideas to help us grow old
:00:26. > :00:29.gracefully? How will the younger generation care for the elderly,
:00:29. > :00:32.and why should they? Good evening.
:00:32. > :00:34.There's more of us, but as a country we're getting older. Those
:00:34. > :00:37.are the headlines from the 2011 census statistics publish today.
:00:37. > :00:40.It's not a surprise that our population is aging but whether
:00:40. > :00:42.we're doing enough to deal with the effects is another matter. Both
:00:42. > :00:46.government and individuals face tough decisions about how to plan
:00:46. > :00:53.for the future. We'll discuss that in a moment, but first Jamie Mcivor
:00:54. > :00:58.takes a look at the figures. The population is ageing. More
:00:58. > :01:01.people living to an old age but the over 65 so my make-up a bigger
:01:01. > :01:11.proportion of Scotland's population than children for the first time
:01:11. > :01:16.ever. It can mean more demand for services for the elderly, whether
:01:16. > :01:25.they're paid for by the taxpayer or by charities by this lunch club --
:01:25. > :01:29.like this lunch club. There are so many people getting much older.
:01:29. > :01:33.We're going to have to get a bigger pension in the future. We have done
:01:33. > :01:42.our stuff in the past. There are too many old folks these days.
:01:42. > :01:48.first data from the last census was unveiled today. 1, 2, 3, jump.
:01:48. > :01:52.the jump is not just in the total population. 890,000 are aged over
:01:52. > :01:55.65. That is bigger than the number of children for the first time.
:01:55. > :01:59.This trend begs underlying questions over just high public
:01:59. > :02:03.services should be focused and how services for the elderly should be
:02:03. > :02:09.financed. Pensioners' organisations say the Government should choose
:02:09. > :02:14.his priorities soon. They have to look at what way they are putting
:02:14. > :02:19.the money out and decide if they are putting it in the right place?
:02:19. > :02:22.Education? Yes, that is good. But we cannot forget the people who
:02:22. > :02:32.have been in a World War and they're coming along and they have
:02:32. > :02:33.
:02:33. > :02:36.to have the services as well. Changing demographics have big
:02:36. > :02:43.implications for the sort of public services we need and how they
:02:43. > :02:48.should be funded. When the 1911 census was conducted, old age
:02:48. > :02:53.pensions were a novelty and only a relatively small number of people
:02:53. > :02:58.lived long enough to receive them. Indeed, the whole shape of society
:02:58. > :03:02.has changed over the past century, quite literally. This graph shows
:03:02. > :03:07.the make-up of the population in 1911. The biggest single group our
:03:07. > :03:11.children aged four and under. If you go up the graph, fewer and
:03:11. > :03:16.fewer people of every age are there, until you find just a tiny number
:03:16. > :03:20.aged over 90. Now to have a look at a similar graph for last year. The
:03:20. > :03:26.population is much more evenly spread and there are far more older
:03:26. > :03:32.people. When you look at the census date of 100 years ago, we had very
:03:32. > :03:37.high numbers of births but people died much earlier. Life-expectancy
:03:37. > :03:42.for a woman in 1911 was 53 years and 54 men. At the opposite end of
:03:42. > :03:46.this deal, we know that in 1911, for every 1000 babies that were
:03:46. > :03:50.born, 100 and that Dean died before the first birthday. By 2011, that
:03:50. > :03:58.figure has dropped to 4%, so you see the population is living longer
:03:58. > :04:03.and you have let dine offered these young the ages. -- lest dying off
:04:03. > :04:07.at these young ages. There is more to consider and where the balance
:04:08. > :04:11.lies between the young and old. Scotland's population over all was
:04:11. > :04:15.at its highest ever, defying predictions of long-term decline.
:04:15. > :04:20.That is not just because people are living for longer. There has been
:04:20. > :04:30.more berths than debts and that is part of the story, but there has
:04:30. > :04:35.been more migration as well. changing demographics of our
:04:35. > :04:40.population beg many questions. How should public services be shipped?
:04:40. > :04:43.House should be services be paid for? And our policies like free bus
:04:43. > :04:50.travel and free personal care for the elderly really affordable long
:04:50. > :04:52.term? I'm joined now by personal finance
:04:52. > :04:55.expert Fergus Muirhead, from Dundee by the journalist and commentator
:04:55. > :05:05.Lesley Riddoch and by Eben Wilson, the Director of TaxpayerScotland
:05:05. > :05:06.
:05:06. > :05:10.campaigning organisation, who's in Southampton tonight. This fact that
:05:10. > :05:14.we now have more elderly and young people, someone has just handed me
:05:14. > :05:18.a copy of the Scottish Daily Mail, whose headlined his time bomb of
:05:18. > :05:22.all the age. Is it has something we have to sort out or is it
:05:23. > :05:27.potentially a crisis? It is potentially a crisis. The
:05:27. > :05:30.inter-generational debt has got so large that young people who we are
:05:30. > :05:35.relying on to pay for the pensions of the elderly, unfortunately,
:05:35. > :05:39.there's not enough of them. We have to get round that problem. There
:05:39. > :05:45.probably are ways. We can be horribly negative about this. There
:05:45. > :05:49.is 3.8 trillion of contingent debt in the public pension system. Or we
:05:49. > :05:54.can just get down to it and do something about it.
:05:54. > :05:59.The 3.8 trillion figure you mentioned, this is liabilities to
:05:59. > :06:02.people who were already retired or everyone in the workforce?
:06:02. > :06:08.Everybody in the workforce plus the people who are already retired.
:06:08. > :06:14.Does it strike you as a crisis? Something struggles in me to see it
:06:14. > :06:19.that way. And I elderly? I and 52. Is the 65-year-old Emily? I don't
:06:19. > :06:22.find many 65-year-old regard themselves that way. The film talk
:06:22. > :06:27.about the generation that came through the war and what they
:06:27. > :06:31.deserve. Anybody that is becoming a pension and I was born after the
:06:31. > :06:35.war. They also tend to own their own homes. They're not, generally
:06:35. > :06:40.speaking, living in old folk's homes. Some of the ideas we have
:06:40. > :06:44.about two new sets of pensioners are has already kind about it did.
:06:44. > :06:48.It is like we are wedded to our own grandparents were and we have not
:06:48. > :06:51.updated yet to think about ourselves. My mother lived in about
:06:51. > :06:56.three or four houses in her life and that was quite exceptional
:06:56. > :06:59.because she moved a lot. I can't keep track of how many different
:06:59. > :07:03.living arrangements I have had. When I'm older, I would be more
:07:03. > :07:08.flexible. I would consider a different kind of arrangement and I
:07:08. > :07:18.would want them for me to choose. The potential crisis?
:07:18. > :07:19.
:07:19. > :07:25.I think lot of people have not made provisions for all data. I agree
:07:25. > :07:28.with Lesley that the idea of what all changes is different now. I
:07:28. > :07:34.read something about of the Government... That is what I wanted
:07:34. > :07:40.to ask. We say crisis, but the state pension age for women is
:07:40. > :07:44.already increasing and from 2020 it will start increasing the on 65 for
:07:45. > :07:49.both. Doesn't that have a huge effect on public finances?
:07:49. > :07:53.expectation is that someone who was 19 now might not get the state
:07:53. > :07:58.pension until they're 77, if current trends are extrapolated
:07:58. > :08:02.onwards. I think there is a huge implications the state pension but
:08:02. > :08:08.also for people who have not made their own pension arrangements.
:08:08. > :08:12.am interested in your take on this. When you look at the effect of
:08:12. > :08:17.raising a state pension age, it makes this crisis you describe
:08:17. > :08:22.suddenly seemed a lot less severe. It is all possible. I am saying we
:08:22. > :08:31.should not be utterly pessimistic but there is a great deal to be
:08:31. > :08:36.done. The difficulty is that... on the issue of equity, there has
:08:36. > :08:39.been all sorts of talk recently that supposedly the baby-boomer
:08:39. > :08:43.generation have grabbed all their money -- all the money for
:08:43. > :08:48.themselves and it is terribly unfair on the younger generation,
:08:48. > :08:54.but I assume that the quid pro quo is that of the raised their
:08:54. > :09:01.retirement age, people who are 19 now it might well exist -- expect
:09:01. > :09:03.to live till around 110. It is not one-sided. And then that they have
:09:03. > :09:08.to pay for their retirement and they will not be able to say
:09:08. > :09:13.anything in the meantime because the elderly have used the money up.
:09:13. > :09:16.So the deeper problems. If someone has also died BT's or breast cancer
:09:16. > :09:22.or prostate cancer, people are going to live a for a very long
:09:22. > :09:26.time. Is that such a problem? There must be ways round that. I am
:09:26. > :09:30.curious about this idea of inter- generational blamed. Is there any
:09:30. > :09:36.meaningful sense in which you think young people do have a right to
:09:36. > :09:43.feel resentful about a baby boomer generation who love spent all the
:09:44. > :09:48.money and have also put us in that debt for future years. I think they
:09:48. > :09:52.may feel resentful of the see people who were 65 getting a
:09:52. > :09:58.pension at that age and they are told they cannot expect to get one
:09:58. > :10:05.until their perhaps BT but they have to start paying for it now.
:10:05. > :10:09.wonder, Lesley, or whether there is a class issue hidden in here. There
:10:09. > :10:14.must be many people know who were younger who will inherit houses
:10:14. > :10:21.from their parents worth half-a- million, who knows, a million
:10:21. > :10:24.pounds. Which immediately widens the gap between that younger
:10:24. > :10:29.generation person and a younger generation person who inherits
:10:29. > :10:34.nothing. In a way that did not happen a generation ago. In that
:10:34. > :10:38.sense, I am curious as to whether you think what is being called a
:10:39. > :10:43.generation problem could actually be a surrogate for actually an
:10:43. > :10:46.inner quality problems. Why do not think of something a matter to
:10:46. > :10:50.them? If we do have the next generation be more productive, let
:10:51. > :10:55.us help them. Let us put a kindergarten in so women can be
:10:55. > :10:59.part of the work force and let us make sure that early years is in,
:10:59. > :11:05.because that is kids the best capability in the rest of their
:11:05. > :11:09.lives. I would say that if we cannot do much, and it will be hard
:11:09. > :11:14.to repatriate wealth between generations because the old -- the
:11:15. > :11:19.older generation will not give it up, we can make sure that our
:11:19. > :11:25.spending is tilted to give the next generation will -- the next -- a
:11:25. > :11:28.better experience of work. That is a shift in a relation mate, and by
:11:29. > :11:31.saying to the state that we now need to make sure that we had the
:11:32. > :11:40.provisions for the working age population that allows them to do
:11:40. > :11:47.the heavy lifting. Do you think we may have to give up the whole
:11:47. > :11:53.concept of free provision of pensions, nursing care, health
:11:53. > :11:58.care? As this problem gets worse? do not think it is just that we
:11:58. > :12:01.will, I think it is that they should. I think Lesley is talking
:12:01. > :12:05.about building personal capital and the need to change the institutions
:12:05. > :12:10.so that we can build personal capital. What has happened is that
:12:10. > :12:13.the state has run as out of money and a better way of going about it
:12:13. > :12:19.is to try and personalise the way that we look after ourselves during
:12:19. > :12:22.their lives... But what do you mean by that? Are you talking about
:12:22. > :12:29.privatising the whole lot or are you talking about a social
:12:29. > :12:35.insurance scheme? I think that the word privatising does not help. I
:12:35. > :12:40.got personalising. I would like to see the contingent debt put to one
:12:40. > :12:43.side and then let the young people free. I would like everyone who is
:12:43. > :12:48.16 and over it to be allowed to keep their national insurance and
:12:48. > :12:52.put it in a pot for them and they can work from there. Some people
:12:52. > :12:58.hate this because it sounds like privatisation, it is
:12:58. > :13:02.personalisation. It allows it -- allows us to take an centres on
:13:02. > :13:07.ourselves to have something to look after us. A free society should
:13:07. > :13:11.allow us to build up personal capital. The other side of that is
:13:11. > :13:15.that surely if you want to go about creating a war of the generations,
:13:15. > :13:20.what are we to do it would be to say to young people, you have to
:13:20. > :13:24.say it -- you have to pay was of taxes that are taking to pay for
:13:24. > :13:28.old people, but you're not going to get any of the things that they pay.
:13:28. > :13:32.I think the interesting point made there is that people need to feel
:13:32. > :13:35.more engaged with the idea of pensions. People feel that they
:13:35. > :13:40.have no control over it because they pay money into something and
:13:40. > :13:46.are constantly told that they are not getting any map -- any money
:13:46. > :13:50.back. Unless you are lucky enough to pay into a company pension
:13:50. > :13:54.scheme, what is the plight as we to put this? The British pension
:13:54. > :13:59.industry has not recovered itself in glory when it comes to private
:13:59. > :14:03.pensions. People feel disengaged because successive governments have
:14:03. > :14:09.changed pension policy. We are now in a situation where people are
:14:09. > :14:13.starting to benefit from their parents' homes and money passing
:14:13. > :14:16.down the generations. Pension planning is not just about this
:14:17. > :14:23.thing called a pension, it is about looking at all sorts of different
:14:23. > :14:28.types of assets and capital. I am curious as to your thoughts on
:14:28. > :14:33.personalising this. I think it is that if we think about things that
:14:33. > :14:37.are clever light currently a lot of tenements have older people living
:14:37. > :14:42.in the ground floor. As we have more older people, we need to have
:14:42. > :14:46.people living on other floors. We need to think about retro fitting
:14:46. > :14:56.so we can put lifts in. It is things that they give people more
:14:56. > :14:59.
:14:59. > :15:02.choice. Thank you all very much. There says. Timebomb of old age.