Minister's delivery bike stunt overlooks age discrimination against older jobseekers: Andrew Vine

That was partly because Mr Stride obviously wouldn’t ever dream of doing such a thing, having made a fortune from his own marketing company before entering politics, and partly because the pictures of him posing awkwardly with a bike left the distinct impression he’d never been near one since leaving school.

But he was making a fair point nevertheless, as was the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, when earlier this year he told the over-50s who are not working that their country needed them.

They’re both right and not just because a shortage of labour is pushing wages up, fuelling the inflation and interest rate rises which are causing such worry in countless households.

There is a vast, under-employed cohort of older people out there whose skills, intelligence and willing have been lost to the economy.

The Government’s own figures tell a compelling story of wasted talent and a

valuable pool of experience simply not being used.

There are 8.6m people of working age in Britain who aren’t in jobs, and of

those, 3.4m are over 50.

Some packed work in during or after the pandemic, which made them reassess their lives and take a gamble on having enough money to go part-time or give up altogether. Some lost their jobs as result of firms going bust because of Covid. Others suffer chronic ill-health.

And many are now hitting financial problems, so might well be receptive to going back to work.

Mr Stride and Mr Hunt are undoubtedly sincere in their belief that the over-50s have much to offer. Aged 61 and 56 respectively, and in the biggest political jobs of their lives, their own careers are proof of that.

But their enthusiasm is not shared by many workplaces which have a frankly offensive, patronising and ageist attitude towards older staff which is the biggest obstacle that the over-50s face.

There can be a totally unjustified suspicion of them as clapped-out fuddy- duddies who will struggle to learn new things, are flummoxed by IT systems and lack flexibility.

And for years it has been common practice for organisations across all sectors to look first to older staff when it comes to making redundancies. The reasoning goes that somebody who is a year or two from retirement will be more amenable to volunteering to go than a colleague in their 30s or 40s, with children at school and maybe a couple of decades left on their mortgage.

There is also a problem with some of those responsible for recruitment – often in their 20s, to whom somebody in their mid-50s or beyond can look impossibly ancient.

One irony of this is that younger managers reluctant to employ over-50s are as likely as not to rely on relatives from that age group to help with their own childcare in order to be able to work full-time.

Contrary to what Mr Stride implied, there is no lack of willingness on the part of older people to return to work - albeit on terms and hours that suit them – especially among those who know they are capable of doing jobs much more intellectually demanding than delivering takeaways by bike.

I have friends both male and female in their 50s and 60s who have been left frustrated by their inability to get jobs, usually after redundancy from careers they had pursued since their early 20s.

Despite being intelligent, well-qualified, motivated and enthusiastic, it has become commonplace for them not even to get an interview across sectors encompassing retail, finance and local government.

Their instinct tells them somebody takes one look at their CVs, sees how old they are, and immediately dismisses their applications on that basis.

Each has a growing pile of rejection letters with the opening line, “I am sorry to inform you…”

Of course, it is never made explicit that their age has gone against them, as that would amount to discrimination and be illegal, but they are anything but fools and know exactly what is going on.

Employers dismissing older applicants out of hand in this manner are robbing themselves of experience, wisdom, commitment to the job and a work ethic that might well be the envy of some younger staff.

If we want to get older people back into the workplace, Messrs Stride and Hunt need to focus less on gimmicks about delivering takeaways and more on encouraging a wholesale change of culture among employers who regard the over-50s as past it.