When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple of years of life, one that not everyone would receive.

Today, life expectancy for a man aged 66 (the current state pension age) is around 85, and a woman aged 66 can expect to live until she is 88. The average person now spends close to a fifth of their life in retirement. What was once a short post-script has become a major chapter – and an increasingly expensive one.

This is the backdrop for the latest statutory review of the state pension age (SPA), led this year by Dr Suzy Morrissey. Her terms of re

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