State Pension Age and Louise Botting Tribute

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1:02This is not a recommendation or offer to buy, sell or attain any specific investment or service. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast. Average mortgage rates hit a three-year high this week, affecting millions of people looking to remortgage or buy their first home. Louise Botting, who launched Moneybox in 1977 and presented it for 15 years, has died aged 87. And why we'll soon be taking note of the hedgehog, the barn owl, the puffin and the bumblebee in the new Bailey bestiary. But first, state pension age rose by one month this week. People who reached 66 on Tuesday will not get their state pension until May next year.

1:47That's a month later than those born the day before. It's part of the gradual rise in state pension age, which will reach 67 for people born on 6 March 1961 or later. It's due to rise again to 68 in the 2040s, but will that change? The State Pension Age Review, the third to be held, is considering how state pension age should be set in future in the light of the latest life expectancy data. Our reporter Jo Krasner spoke to people in Liverpool. Hi, my name is Benjamina. I'm 32 years old. So I think the pension age should be tailored to the kind of jobs people do. I mean, people that do a lot of manual labour, like in construction and other industries, that requires the body to be under intense sort of work.

2:35Their pension age should be tailored to those needs. Similarly to people that do more desktop activities. I feel like we are at the service maybe with the life expectancy here. but then with the there's not going to be a one size fits all maybe method I think it could be altered to do with those metrics but would have to be fair and equal for for everyone. Hi I'm Jess and I'm 31 I've got an employer's pension I would love to retire at 55 but I feel like retirement's probably going to be something about 70 for me if everyone's paying in the same or similar, then you should be getting a fair deal on your pension.

3:19So, yeah, I'm Scott, I'm 48, and we live in Scotland. I've not really considered, you know, if it should be regional or age, but maybe job. And what age are you thinking of retiring? I want to retire, 60s. Yeah, about 60. I don't want to go up to 67. Hi, I'm Janice. I'm 45. I think it should be job-related. There's obviously a lot of jobs that are much more physical, and you wouldn't want to still be working up to a certain age. I myself have a shop, just a little independent, so I don't fancy retiring anytime soon. I love my shop. I would work till I'm 70, at least. Hi, I'm Jen. I am 38. Yeah, it could be on, like, regionally, couldn't it?

4:02And then it's also, like, maybe take illnesses, type of work that they've had in the years. But I think it definitely does need to be looked at. I don't want to be working until I'm 75. I'd love to maybe retire at 60, but I can't really see it going back. I can only see it going forward. Well, listening to that is Dr Susie Morrissey. She was appointed by the government last year to prepare an independent report to inform the government's state pension age review. Susie Morrissey, this is, I think, the first interview you've given about your report. Some people in Liverpool seem to expect 70 will be the new 66.

4:38Is that where we're heading?

4:40Dr Suzy Morrissey: I mean certainly we have got age increases happening and so we know that we're likely to get to 68 in due course so anything is possible in terms of it increasing. 70 is not unusual in other countries. There was also a sense in Liverpool though that one pension age for everyone doesn't always feel fair. Did your consultation find that too? Yeah we certainly did hear that. people express concerns about different jobs as the people in your interviews did and health status and there is definitely a question there about how fair that would feel if you have worked in a physical job compared to those of us who do less physical work.

5:22But it's a challenge isn't it deciding what's fair and never mind trying to administer different ages for different jobs That would be very, very difficult, wouldn't it?

5:32Dr Suzy Morrissey: It would be. I think we shouldn't underestimate the task there. There is a reason that we use a single state pension age, notwithstanding the challenges of doing so. Imagine trying to define the types of jobs that would be eligible for a reduction and how long would one have to have done that job, you know, or regionally. Is it where you were born or how long you've lived in a period, you know, in a particular place? It's extremely challenging, I think, to find criteria that people would consider fair. Yes, because life expectancy does vary, doesn't it? I mean, it can be seven, eight years longer in some places than others.

6:09So, again, you'd have to define what the age would be and how long you had to live there.

6:15Dr Suzy Morrissey: Exactly. And I think, you know, whilst the idea of a differentiated, a variable to a state pension aid might sound attractive at some level, I think once you start to get into those intricacies of how exactly you would do that definition, I think probably people understand that there's a reason that we use a single one. Yes. And your job was to consider changes in life expectancy as much as anything else. That was going up and up, wasn't it? But then it stopped. Where is it now, life expectancy? So life expectancy is still increasing, but not at the rate that it was increasing in the past. So it is increasing, but much more slowly.

6:54And what about healthy life expectancy?

6:57Dr Suzy Morrissey: So there's the contrast. Healthy life expectancy is actually decreasing. So we're spending fewer years in good health. And so, of course, as the state pension age increases, that means that we're likely to be spending years of ill health, but still under state pension age. And what about people approaching pension age? in people now 65. Many of the people we spoke to in Liverpool wanted to retire before state pension age. How many people are working in that later life before they reach pension age? Yeah, so it's perhaps not as many as you might think. So the employment rate for people between 50 and 64 is only around 70%.

7:41Dr Suzy Morrissey: And by the time you get to the year before state pension age, only 42 % of adults are still in paid work. And that raises the question of how they live, doesn't it? Because if you can't work and you can't get your state pension, you're on working age benefits if you've no money of your own. That's right. So the majority of people aged 50 to 64 who aren't in paid work give long-term sickness as a reason for not being in work. It is hard, isn't it, to get a job over 50, perhaps especially for women, never mind in your 60s and up to 67 soon how can that be resolved yeah I think it's fair to say that that is a challenge some of it is a bit of a mindset isn't it as you said a lot of your interviewees were were not wanting to work that that late so there's something about us and rethinking about how late in life we're prepared to work and then there's something about the employment that we have the types of roles that we're offered when you speak to people about working into their later life, they often talk about flexibility as being really important.

8:47And very briefly, in a word really, some hint about when the report will be published.

8:54Dr Suzy Morrissey: I don't know exactly, but I don't think it will be before the spring next year. Before the spring next year, let's hope. Susie Morrissey, and perhaps you'll come back and talk to us then. Thank you very much indeed. Now, the sad news that Louise Botting, who presented Moneybox for its first 15 years, has died aged 87. Here she is with Peter Hobday, bringing Moneybox to Radio 4 for the first time on Sunday, October 2nd, 1987.

9:27Good morning, I'm Peter Hobday. And I'm Louise Botting. And this is Moneybox. In the next 30 minutes, what the big six unit trusts have to offer.

9:41We'll be asking the question, how do you teach the children about money?

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9:56Then, the man behind your money, Britain's top taxman, the boss of the Inland Revenue. I should have said, of course, Sunday, October 2nd, 1977. That was accompanied by Pink Floyd's song, Money. Now, Louise was described this week by her daughter, Anna, as a super smart trailblazer. Before she blazed the Moneybox trail, though, Louise wrote for the Daily Mail, broadcast on the British Forces Network, but also worked in the city. And when she left Moneybox in February 1992, she became a board member at General Accident, now part of Aviva, and was then one of only three women who sat in the boardroom of a FTSE 100 company.

10:37With Louise, Moneybox kept ahead of the changes and the dangers in personal finance. Here she is in 1986, interviewing a junior minister at the Department of Health and Social Security called John Major. She asked him about the risk of personal pensions being missold after the government changed the law. We hope that the Social Security Act, and these are the first pension regulations under it, will open up a market for the 11 million or so people at present in work who do not have an occupational pension. The danger, of course, is that some very fierce salesmen will go to people who are in fact in very good occupational pension schemes and persuade them to do their own thing and disadvantage the individual.

11:18or what protection is there going to be to prevent that happening? We're very conscious about that. The whole of the panoply of the financial services framework will apply to ensure that there is the greatest possible safeguards for the individual consumer of pensions. Well, Louise's fears were of course realised. That change brought about the first great pensions mis-selling scandal with an estimated 2 million people persuaded to leave those good company schemes by sales staff who earned large commissions selling them inferior personal pensions. a scandal which eventually cost the industry more than£11 billion in redress.

11:53And I wonder what ever happened to John Major. At the end of her 15 years on Moneybox, Louise spoke to her Moneybox editor, Vincent Duggleby, about the early days. Yes, it started as a bit of a crusade to give impartial advice, explaining the basic principles of how to look after your money. Of course, in those days, people weren't subject to the same advertising and mail charts, and there wasn't anything like the number of products available, no SERPs, no PEPs, no Tessas, no BES. and perhaps most important, no Financial Services Act. But there was, and still is, inflation. Back in 1977, we were just emerging from the worst bout of inflation since the war, and the only way to protect your savings was to take a risk in the stock market.

12:30The biggest risk I took was to change the signature tune in 1983. Hello, and welcome to Moneybox. You may have money to spare, to loan or to lend, accounts that you share or squander or spend, or cash your savings stuffed inside some socks. Financial review is long overdue. Don't let money stew with profit in view. What you must do is tune to Moneybox. To be honest, I wasn't too unhappy when we finally dropped the signature tune altogether. It's quite difficult writing headlines to fit in with the music. Louise Botting talking to Vincent Duglerby in 1992. And that theme, much loved by our audience, if not by Louise, was written and performed by Instant Sunshine.

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14:07and involve the risk of losing more than the amount originally deposited and any profit you might have made. This is not a recommendation or offer to buy, sell or attain any specific investment or service.

14:19Average mortgage rates hit a three-year high this week. Bad news for millions of homeowners looking to remortgage or indeed people hoping to buy their first home. Rising rates are better news, of course, for savers or should be, so have their rates gone up? Dan Whitworth has been watching this all week. Dan, first a three-year high for mortgage costs. Well, the headline, Paul, is that the average five-year fixed-rate mortgage hits a milestone not seen for three years, as Rachel Springall from the financial data firm Moneyfax explained. So a lot of lenders have caught up to more volatile markets.

14:52So over the last couple of weeks, they have been increasing rates. And because of that reason, at the start of this week, we saw the average five-year fixed mortgage rate hit 6%. Now, what that means is in real terms, if you had a mortgage at the start of January versus take them on now, it costs up to£2 ,000 more per year on your mortgage now because of higher interest rates. Thankfully, over the last couple of days, we have seen a couple of lenders do some reductions, which is positive to see. But again, in terms of where rates are going, it's not over yet because if unrest continues and is prolonged and we have more of an energy crisis and inflation rises, then we could see mortgage rates go up more.

15:29Now, another piece, Paul, of interesting context that she gave was that when the LizTrust mini budget impacted mortgage rates four years ago, it was a fairly sharp spike, followed by a reasonably sharp drop too. Now, Rachel says this recent high is different in so much as it's been steadily building since the start of the year. And whilst most mortgages, around three quarters of them, are fixed rate, people looking to remortgage might want to look for something different. Well, Polly Gilbert is from Tembo Money. That's a digital mortgage broker and savings account provider. Well, she says those most likely to take a financial hit are coming off low fixed rate deals from five years ago.

16:08The greatest sense of urgency that we're seeing is definitely existing homeowners, typically who are coming off the end of a five-year product. So they're very likely to be coming off a lovely pandemic interest rate that probably begins with a one or a two, because that was very common then. And then now looking at an interest rate that might begin with a four if they're lucky, or potentially a five. So that is a huge, huge difference. that is definitely where we're seeing the most concern, the most panic. For buyers, I would say actually we're seeing they have quite a lot of ability at the moment to negotiate on price.

16:40So even though we're seeing interest rates go up, I think there are a lot of properties that have been on the market for a long time and actually those sellers are willing to accept a slightly lower price to get things moving. So they're able to actually mitigate those higher interest rates with a lower property price. Some potentially good news then, Dan, if you're looking to buy. but around 7 million homes in England alone have a mortgage. If they're looking to remortgage, what should they be doing now? Right, for a start, they need to contact lenders as soon as possible. Some lenders will offer deals up to six months before a fixed rate ends.

17:13For others, it may be 90 days. And that is so important given, here's a stat for you, Paul, around 1 ,500 sub-5 % mortgage deals have disappeared off the market since the start of just last month. Here's Rachel Springall again. so if you're looking at mortgages right now and fixed don't look really very positive for you to kind of lock in for two or five years you could consider a tracker mortgage tracker mortgage rates are abundance at the moment in sub five percent so if you're looking for a low rate specifically for your mortgage look at variable rate mortgages look at trackers particularly those where you can exit the deal early without a huge repayment charge if you're going on to a variable rate Don't do that.

17:55Most of the variable rates of your revert are around 7 % on average. That's a lot higher than fixed rates. So that's mortgage rates, Dan. What about savings? For people with savings, interest rate rising should be good news. Yeah, very much so. Of course, we've got the budget coming up at the end of the month as well. And then just a week after that, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee will meet to set the bank rate. Now, it's been held at 3.75 % for the last six meetings. But at the last meeting, six members voted to keep that rate at 3.75%, but three members voted to raise it. It's likely to get more votes in that direction at the next meeting, which is why Polly Gilbert says savers can take advantage of higher rates.

18:38I think the main piece of advice is probably the most simple one, which is there are so many people, millions of people, who just hold savings in their current account or in an account which is learning very, very low interest, so sometimes as low as 1%. my main bit of advice would just be go and look at what your savings are actually earning and then get onto any kind of comparison site online and just look at what the best products are out there. It's so important to know what savings rates you're getting for your money. Just a month ago, Paul, you'll remember we reported how almost£1.2 trillion, yes, trillion pounds, is languishing in bank accounts that pay an average of just over 1%.

19:16So check your rate and make sure your money is working as hard as it can for you. Indeed, thanks Dan. I checked Best Buys this morning. If you fix your savings rate for a year, you can get more than 5.1%. Easy Access Best Buys are over 4.5%. Cash Isis, where the interest is tax-free, may of course be different from that. And now, Bailey's Beasts.

19:43Erinatio, Taito, Fratocula and Bombas have all been picked by Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey to appear on the next series of banknotes. He won't say just yet how the Hedgehog, Barn Owl, Puffin and Bumblebee, to use their English names, will be distributed among the five, a ten, a twenty or fifty, but they will replace Churchill, Turner, Austin and Turing for the shrinking minority who still use banknotes. The decision follows a public vote. Almost half a million people responded to the consultation and many Moneybox listeners made their choice. That was in March when we asked you for your suggestions and you gave us 48 different insects, mammals, birds and fish, which you thought would look good on a tenner.

20:27Here's Elizabeth and Liz who both backed the hedgehog on hearing Thursday's news.

20:32Dr Suzy Morrissey: I'm delighted the hedgehog's included. It's a lovely animal. I have very fond memories of it from being a small child and being shown a hedgehog when I was, I don't know, four or five, something like that. A moment of complete wonder for me. I volunteer at our local hedgehog rescue, Burnt Island Hedgehog Haven. And we were all rooting for the hedgehog because, you know, it's an endangered species. It's British. It's really cute. It's been featured on, you know, Beatrix Potter. Everybody knows Mrs Tiggywinkle. And so we were really hopeful that the hedgehog would be picked. I'm thrilled to bits it has been.

21:13Elizabeth and Liz and bank notes issued by Royal Bank of Scotland already feature wildlife. Live now to talk to Rhys Phillips. He's the man whose signature will be on the new Bank of England notes. Rhys Phillips, that's because you take over as Bank of England chief cashier a week on Monday. Congratulations. Have you signed your first notes yet? Thank you, Paul. No, not yet. After I'm in role, I'll be doing that. But no, I'm not quite there yet. But it's a huge honour to be appointed Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, the central bank for the United Kingdom. It's an even bigger honour to be doing it now at a point when we're looking forward to design a whole new generation of notes.

21:52With wildlife on it, with animals on it. But why get rid of the famous people? Is it now just too controversial to pick the people in this slightly febrile world we live in? I can see why people say that, Paul. The truth is we redesign our notes every 10 to 15 years, and that's so we can include the absolutely most advanced security features available to help us stay ahead of would-be counterfeiters. When we do that, we change how the notes look, their appearance. And in 2025, we decided to ask the public to help us decide which of six potential themes we'd feature on the next generation. I think any of the themes we shortlisted, Paul, whether nature, historical figures, architecture, or so on, would have allowed us to design a really nice set of modern secure notes.

22:40But the feedback we got from the public was pretty clearly in support of nature, and particularly wildlife. And the feedback from the public on the votes, though, they did, the fox did better than the puffin, but you haven't used the fox. Again, is that too controversial? Some people love them, of course, others hate them. yeah um look the views of the public were a really important consideration here we were delighted so many people got involved um we asked for people to choose their preferred creature from three short lists of amphibians insects and fish birds and mammals and the top animal in each of those categories the bumblebee the barn owl and the hedgehog will be on the next notes as you say we selected the puffin because it was the most popular marine animal and feedback so and it It wasn't just, well, it was part of the members of the public, were schoolchildren, weren't they?

23:31They were. We got a lot of interest from schools and children. That was especially pleasing. It's a reminder, actually, of the important role physical cash plays in developing numeracy and financial skills, as was mentioned on the clip you played in the Lewis Botting item earlier. Yes. Now, you've said these designs will be harder to fake, or at least security will be stronger. Is there something about bumblebees and puffins that makes them harder to copy than humans or bridges? So the thing that makes the design more secure is the marrying together, the material, the technical features, the holograms and the like, and the design.

24:07So we need designs that we can print in very fine detail that are distinctive enough so you and I can say, well, that doesn't look right. And that can be a setting for us to deploy those security features. Our experts think animals are a particularly good way to do that, partly because they move and they interact with habitats in so many different ways. So that helps us weave design and security together. I'd love moving pictures on a banknote, wouldn't you? When will we see these new bestial banknotes, Rhys? So we're working hard now on all a very large number of things we need to progress. It does take time.

24:41So we're designing, we'll be testing. We then need to print literally billions of these things, Paul. So it'll be around the end of, or the turn of the decade, before they appear in your hand. And just briefly, very briefly, tell me what you voted for. Well, I didn't vote personally, as I was part of the group that advised on the choice, but I can tell you there was a lot of debate around the kitchen table in my house. My sons were heavily in favour of puffins. My wife wanted the butterfly. So some members of the family are happier with the outcome than others. Rhys Phillips, thanks very much.

25:13The new chief cashier at the Bank of England from a week on Monday. Well, time for us to join Bombus Terrestris, the bumblebee, and buzz off. But a reminder that the next programme to drop, if you subscribe, also has a sting in the tail. It's a story we've covered a number of times on this podcast, but it still populates our inbox. Capita, and how it has mismanaged the civil service and teachers' pension schemes which it administers. The next Moneybox Live with Felicity Hanna will devote the whole programme to your capita experiences and responses from capita and the government. You can email us moneybox at bbc.co.uk as many of you already are about that or indeed any money worries or joys.

25:59But we really love your voice notes. Leave one on WhatsApp 033 067 83 183. We do read and listen to them all. You might get on the show. Buzzing in this podcast were the reporters Dan Whitworth and Joe Krasner, researchers Ima Devlin and Catherine Lund, studio manager Chris Mather. Our editor is Jess Quayle. I'm Paul Lewis and this was the BBC News Money and Work production for BBC Sounds. I haven't seen my son since 2012. That's the last time I hugged him. I know that my son is somewhere alive. This is Deborah Tice. Her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. And for years, I've been searching for him.

26:48Oh, gunshots. Somebody's written a message and they're all on blood. What do you want from me? I want you to solve the mystery. I want to know about my son. Where is Austin Tice? From BBC Radio 4. Listen on the I'm Not a Monster Presents podcast on BBC Sounds.

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