After a call from Andy Briggs, the government's champion for older workers to increase the number of mature workers by 12% by 2022, a group of businesses: Aviva, Atos, Barclays, the Co-operative Group, Home Instead Senior Care, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, Mercer and Walgreens Boots Alliance, have publically committed to tackling a potential skills gap by recruiting more individuals over 50 years old. Both transparency and target setting are quite fashionable at present following gender pay reporting. However, whether there will be any real development in this area remains to be seen. With Brexit on the horizon, and uncertainty about any restrictions on free movement, the pool of home-grown talent in their 50's and older should sensibly be considered. Notwithstanding this, there is some tension between this drive and the March 2017 Advocate General's opinion in the European case of Fries v. Lufthansa CityLine GmbH C-190/16 that an age limit of 65 imposed on EU commercial pilots is not discriminatory. In that case the Advocate General felt that the age limit was both appropriate and necessary to achieve the aim of air traffic safety. He said that there could hardly be any question that capability declined with age. For many working in non safety critical areas employers should be able to manage capability issues by pro-actively applying their capability processes at an early stage.
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