Minister: My gran forged her birth certificate to keep on working
rETIrEMENT is a welcome milestone for many.
But Health Secretary Matt Hancock has revealed his grandmother forged her birth certificate and passport – so she could keep working past the age of 60.
The Tory leadership contender said Annie Hancock had feared she would be forced to sit at home alone all day when she reached the then retirement age. To avoid such a fate, the widow lied about her date of birth so she could continue working as a manager at a Nottingham branch of the Co- op supermarket. She ‘illicitly broke every rule in the book’ to make her employers believe that she was a decade younger, and worked at the shop for a further decade. She died aged 103. Mr Hancock told the Daily Express: ‘ She worked all her life. She wanted to keep working and had to lie about her age when she got to 60. I can say this now because she is dead.
‘She forged her birth certificate and then she got a forged passport by changing a digit to say she was ten years younger, because for her, work was what she lived for.’
He said she ‘ didn’t want to’ retire when she was told to, and added: ‘ She carried on for another ten years, illicitly breaking every rule in the book.’
Under modern employment law there is no enforced retirement age – even for those claiming a state pension. However, had she been rumbled, Mrs Hancock’s forgery could have fallen foul of the Criminal Justice Act 1925, which carried a £100 fine or a jail sentence of up to two years.
Mr Hancock revealed her misdeeds at the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity, which is seeking to harness the enthusiasm of retirees. He said pensioners should not have to sell their homes to fund their care in old age.
Care home fees can be as much as £1,000 a week, but Mr Hancock stressed his belief that those who have saved all their lives should not be punished. He called the threat of losing a family home or savings to meet spiralling health and social care costs an ‘injustice’.
He said: ‘I really don’t like that, I really don’t. So I completely understand why people worry about the threat of losing their home because of something that they cannot do anything about.’
A Government green paper is due to set out options for how to fund care, including through a state- backed insurance scheme. However, it has been delayed six times already and there is no publication date set at the moment.
Mr Hancock added: ‘The thing about social care is, to get a sustainable solution it needs crossparty agreement... and getting that sort of cross-party agreement when Brexit has been so alive has been really difficult.’
‘It was what she lived for’