Why the four-day week could work

Most people were scandalised by John McDonnell’s proposal to promote a four-day working week. But before we get incensed about giving people more leisure during their working life, we need to ask another question. If it really is so vital to the economy that people spend more time at work, then why does the government spend £41 billion every year (a third of the cost of the NHS) providing tax relief on pension contributions? This merely encourages older and more experienced employees to leave the workforce several years earlier than necessary. Remember, five years needlessly spent in retirement is 20 years that could have been spent enjoying a working life of three-day weekends.

We don’t only have a problem with inequality of wealth — we have a problem with inequality of leisure. Britain’s leisure gains have mostly accrued to the young and the old. To the young in the form of ludicrously protracted time spent in higher education; to the old in the form of premature retirement. Relatively modest public-sector workers are given pensions worth millions in their sixties. Meanwhile, a middle-aged couple with children have no choice but to work 80 hours a week between them just to maintain a household. They might like to move into the larger house next door, but there’s probably a pensioner living in it.

Trust me, we need older people in the workforce. In my experience, it is only the over-fifties who really know what they’re doing. And this isn’t the 1930s. Fewer jobs are physically gruelling and life expectancy is higher. Wondrous and under-used technologies such as video-conferencing allow people to do much useful work from home. Both my father and father-in-law worked happily beyond their mid-seventies — far healthier than doing nothing at all.