I’ll get on my bike for Deliveroo if you will too, Mr Works Minister

The work and pensions secretary thinks the ‘economically inactive’ over-50s should take up shifts with delivery companies like Just Eat and Deliveroo. Fast-thinking on fast food? More like futile fantasy, says Sean O’Grady

As a someone who’s practised the trade of journalism for some years, I’m quite used to being asked for hot takes (if not takeaways) (PA Wire)

Speaking as an “over-50” who happens to be not-quite “over the hill”, I’m not overly offended by the suggestion that I should go out and deliver takeaways if I’d like to earn some extra cash.

The suggestion springs from the ever-fecund mind of Mel Stride, 61, who is the work and pensions secretary. Too many people take far too snobby a view of such work, which is as worthy of respect as any other kind of labour, including even the political sort (perhaps more so). Ferrying curries, Korean nourish bowls and pizzas around isn’t something I’d find demeaning in some way, even though I imagine the money isn’t great in that line of work.

I’d draw the line at getting on a moped, primarily to protect the other road users, and I’d be too slow to be a useful Deliveroo cyclist, but I could drive a car or a van with hot treats in the back, no bother. Indeed, I’d like to think I’d be quite good at it. As someone who’s practised the trade of journalism for some years, I’m quite used to being asked for hot takes, if not takeaways, and am well used to deadlines.

However, old-timers thinking of taking this sort of thing up shouldn’t have any illusions about how tough the shifts can be, and demands it makes on your time, especially if you’re put on a zero hours contract. According to our Mel, “what we’re seeing here is the ability to log on and off any time you like, no requirement to have to do a certain number of hours over a certain period of time, which is driving huge opportunities.”

That is, one suspects, a slightly romanticised view of this world and, without being unkind, I’d like to see him haul fast food around the less salubrious parts of his constituency. That photo op, I fear, will elude us, even though the headline “Mel Takes it in his Stride” writes itself.

Turning to macroeconomics, as well as one might while on a longish Dominos errand, the scheme seems pretty futile. The idea is to fill the vast number of vacancies in the economy by using students, early retirees, pensioners, homemakers, and the infirm to fill the gaps. Economics is a discipline that does itself few favours and the ugly phrase “economically inactive” to describe this large cohort of people who choose not to work or look to work makes them sound lazy.

They’re not, they’re just in a position where they cannot take work or actually don’t need to work and prefer to spend their time otherwise. About 8.6 million people in the UK – equivalent to one in five working adults – are classed as “economically inactive”, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than 3.4 million of them are over 50 but under retirement age.

They look like a large and tempting pool of labour, ready to help out on farms, in care homes, pubs, supermarkets, hospitals and schools – but in reality they are anything but. They are not all bone idle benefits sponges, but more likely unable to work, or so comfortably off they don’t need to.

The pandemic pushed quite a few in the middle classes into reconsidering their options, and, for those with a valuable house to cash in, some savings and a generous occupational pension, the notion of leaving the rat race behind seemed more an attractive and practical proposition than ever.

Others, suffering from long Covid and the like, are simply not up to taking a job. Besides if they do, their meagre earnings will be taxed so heavily it hardly makes it worthwhile. Stride himself, for example, will receive a “redundancy” payout if he loses his job, and an index-linked defined benefit pension when he retires from public service. After at least 15 years of service and, no doubt, the odd directorship and other provision for his old age, Mel won’t be needing to do any nightshifts at the Amazon warehouse or pull pints at the local ’Spoons to make ends meet.

Ever since Norman Tebbit made his famous remark at the 1981 Tory conference that his unemployed father in the 1930s “got on his bike and looked for work”, Conservative ministers have been telling us to get on our bikes – though rarely so literally as Mel has. I’ll make a deal with him, though: when the time comes for him to answer the call “Did somebody say Just Eat?”, so will I.