Mike Saunders, of Wrinklies Direct, a recruitment agency that specialises in mature employees

I HAVE a lot of people on my books who feel they have been discriminated against.

But in many ways I think everyone is fighting the wrong cause; the mandatory retirement age is stupid, but it’s not really the problem.

Even if there is no retirement age, we still see people being moved on as they get older. What really needs to change is our overall attitude to both age and to business.

Older people need to learn to recognise the value of the experience they have got and learn how to sell themselves, and businesses need to adjust the way they manage talent.

In Britain we have tended towards the old civil-service-style approach where we leave underperforming people in their positions for too long. If we adopted the traditionally American up-or-out approach, there would be plenty of room for talented people to carry on working long after 65.

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