Crisis blights joy of golden generation – Esther Rantzen highlights heartbreaking issue | Personal Finance | Finance

Tragically, the Coronation Street storyline of an old lady whose intense loneliness caused her to try to end her life is only too accurate.

I have been speaking to a lady in her mid-nineties, I’ll call her Sheila, who confessed to me that she too had tried to take her own life, and she too had claimed to her family that it was an accidental overdose.

Sheila told me she used to be so active, she was so outgoing in her youth and had been blessed with a very happy marriage. But recently she had lost her husband, and her mobility, and suddenly there seemed to be no reason for her to carry on. Fortunately, her attempted suicide failed, and she realised the anguish she would have caused her children.

“I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she told me. But I know. In that moment of despair, she thought there was no point in her existence. Since she confessed, I have rung her every week.

But we need to ask ourselves, how is it in today’s Britain our older people feel they have so little value that they might as well end it all, that if they did, nobody would notice or care?

When I was fact-finding to discover whether there was a role for a helpline for older people, research which led to the setting up of The Silver Line, I met a lovely older lady who told me she woke up each morning, got herself dressed and sat on her bed waiting for death. It was unbearable to hear the hopelessness in her voice. She did not believe she deserved any kind of quality of life, she thought that she was long past her sell-by date, so she might as well not exist.

Another story broke my heart, from a friend who provides alarm pendants for older people to press if they suffer a fall. He told me that some of his older customers would rather die on the floor than ask for help, that they are too embarrassed to press the button on their pendant.

Some customers are so determined never to become a burden they hide the pendant in a drawer rather than wear it.

How can we convince older people who believe they are expendable that we do indeed value them, that even in their eighties and nineties their lives are still worthwhile?

It is time for the Government to step in. One appointment by our new Prime Minister, whoever that is, would, I believe, make a real difference, and yet this is an issue which has been totally ignored by Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.

It is clear ageism is so pervasive in this country that none of the speeches is devoted to the needs of the older age group even though most of the members of the Conservative party who will vote in the leadership context are over 60. Do they debate the needs of the young? Yes. The taxpayers? Yes. Education? Yes. And these are indeed all important issues. But so are our needs of older people, and none of the hustings has focused on their welfare.

And yet whoever becomes our new Prime Minister, I believe the creation of a Minister for Older People would really make a difference, it would be a crucial first step in changing negative ageist attitudes in this country.

The Minister’s presence around the Cabinet table would at long last be a demonstration that the Government cares about older people’s lives and wants them to be represented at the highest level of decision-making.

The vital issue of supplying and funding social care could no longer be delayed, postponed and kicked into the long grass yet again.

At the moment every aspect of an older person’s life is sliced up
and divided between government departments, which inevitably
means they fall through the gaps and end up at the bottom of the list of political priorities.

Are older people’s savings suffering unduly from the rising cost of living and inflation? That is for the Treasury to deal with, but their attention is diverted to more immediate issues, for instance, corporation tax and national insurance.

Are older patients forced to stay too long in hospital because of the lack of social care and then blamed as “bed blockers”, or failing to get the medical treatment they need because of their age? That is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care which has far higher profile problems to solve, like vaccinations for monkeypox.

Each ministry has its own agenda, and inevitably the plight of older people falls off their blotter. And the neglect of older customers’ needs by the commercial sector, banks, telephone providers and other big companies run by executives in their forties, inevitably also goes unnoticed.

Reluctant to complain, older people’s voices go unheard. There is nobody in government who sees the whole picture, prioritises their issues and acts as their advocate.

So at the next hustings, could the Tory members put the crucial question which has not been asked so far. Will the candidate, if elected Prime Minister, appoint a Minister for Older People?

And depending on the reply you receive, you will know how to vote. Not of course that you wish to blackmail or bully either candidate, but since this is a unique moment of decision, surely it is the moment to make sure the voices of Britain’s older people are heard.