The government has been urged to "rethink" raising the state pension age after figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a 19-year healthy life expectancy gap between the UK’s most and least deprived areas.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents 5.5 million people through 48 member unions, argued that raising the state pension age would push people nearing retirement into poverty, with ONS figures showing that people in the most disadvantaged areas had an average healthy life expectancy of 52.3 years.

This falls short of the current state pension age, with the problems presented by this being emphasised by TUC, which added that its recent research had found that 534,876 workers aged 60 to 65 have had to leave the workplace due to medical reasons.

TUC pensions officer, Jack Jones, said: “Everybody should be able to look forward to a decent retirement. But the gap in healthy life expectancy between rich and poorer areas remains huge, and in the case of women is widening.

“The government must rethink its plans to raise the state pension age. This risks making inequalities worse and pushing more people into poverty. It makes no sense to make people, who are forced out of the labour due to ill health, to wait longer for their pension.”

As well as the sizeable gap in healthy life expectancy, the ONS figures showed that the difference in overall life expectancy at birth between the least and most deprived areas of England was 9.4 years for men and 7.6 years for women.

AJ Bell analysis noted that the data pointed to “a widening life expectancy gap between rich and poor” as people living in the least deprived areas of the country had seen a significant increase in life expectancy since 2014, while no significant changes were observed in the most deprived areas.

AJ Bell senior analyst, Tom Selby, said: “Perhaps the most striking example of this inequality can be found on the steps of parliament. There is a near 10-year chasm between the average life expectancy of a male born in Westminster, one of the wealthiest parts of the country, and Blackpool, one of the most deprived regions in the North West of England.”

He stopped short of joining the TUC in calling for a halt to increases to the state pension age, but said the social policy challenges presented by the figures “should be front-and-centre” of political debate.

Selby continued: “The current flat-rate state pension system and universal retirement age has the benefit of simplicity, but it also means those with the lowest life expectancies – who tend to live in the poorest areas – will, on average, receive the least.

“Some will argue this is fair given higher earners will, on average, pay more in National Insurance contributions over their lifetimes. However, there is a debate to be had about the future balance between simplicity and fairness in the system given the huge inequalities we can see across the country.”

Also commenting on the ONS figures but taking a different angle, Just Group communications director, Stephen Lowe, noted the stats showed the need for wealthier people and their financial advisers to plan their retirement around living for longer.

He commented: “Financial advisers are likely to have clients from less deprived areas who will live longer than average and be healthier for longer too. However, the averages presented by life expectancy statistics mask a wide range of experiences.

“This underlines the importance that intermediaries take into account each client’s own health and lifestyle factors when creating a personalised financial plan that can deal with the ‘what ifs’ of the future.”

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