Dame Joan Bakewell is to step down as the first official Voice of Older People after 18 months in the role with a call on the next government to make it a full-time professional job.

Dame Joan, who turns 77 today, believes that an Older People’s Commissioner is now required to make sure the needs of the ageing population are higher on the political agenda.

The role of the “VOOP” is currently unpaid, and she took it on on the understanding that she would fit her responsibilities in around her other work.

She is now eager to focus on these other projects and believes the general election is a good time to leave the post, with the hope that the position will be beefed up afterwards.

While in the role, she championed the issues of care for the elderly and scrapping the compulsory retirement age, and believed that she helped to ignite a debate about older people.

Her departure will be greeted with sadness by many charities and pressure groups who liked her blunt speaking on difficult issues. They also thought her a very positive role model for older people.

Pursuing other projects

However, in a recent interview Dame Joan hinted that she did not want to become defined by the role and seen solely as an expert on old age.

“I don’t want to get on to the old too much, please,” she said. “It’s a label now and I’m not ready to be old.” She appears to be as much in demand today as she was in the 1960s when she was dubbed “the thinking man’s crumpet”.

She hosts a new Radio Four programme on ethical dilemmas, has had her first novel well received and writes for several newspapers, including The Times.

She is currently embarking on her second novel and is making a BBC Panorama documentary on old age care.

A lot more to be done

In her report to the Government after a year in the job, she said that much remained to be done in the area of old age care, and on standards in particular. That is where ministers claim they have made most progress in recent years.

She contrasted the “happy, smiling faces of people attractively dressed and enjoying each other’s company” on the marketing literature of care providers with what she hears from thousands of elderly people.

“There is clearly a problem of monitoring the service being provided,” Dame Joan said in the report. “It is clear that many people do not know what recourse they have when there are lapses, what redress they can expect and, indeed, many fear that they will be victimised if they are known to complain.”

It is not clear whether the next government will heed her advice and create a new Commissioner for the Elderly. The Conservatives are committed to scrapping as many quangos as they can and Labour is conscious about creating new ones.