The Conservatives would have to raise the state pension age above 70 to meet the cost of keeping the triple lock, Treasury minister Torsten Bell has claimed. Labour has announced reforms to the triple-lock promise for the next parliament, with initial proceeds earmarked for the national care service. The triple lock increases the state pension each year in line with the largest of inflation, 2.5% or earnings growth.
Bell said the costs of an unreformed triple lock would increase over time to £50bn by 2050, according to government estimates. He argued that without adjusting the triple lock, a Conservative government would need to accelerate increases to the state pension age to make the scheme sustainable. 'If you don't want to have an adjustment to the triple lock, then you will need to do other things to make the state pension remotely sustainable,' Bell said.
The Conservatives have attacked Labour's reforms and insisted they would stick with the triple lock. However, Bell pointed to the party's record in government, when it accelerated state pension age increases in 2011 and 2014, sometimes giving people only five years' notice. The state pension age, now under review, is already expected to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046. In 2013, then chancellor George Osborne described increasing the pension age as one of the less controversial moves the government had made, whilst delivering 'absolutely enormous savings'.
Bell said the public would prefer Labour's willingness to argue for reform over what he claimed was the Conservatives' failure to be honest about the triple lock's sustainability. He cited Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch's suggestion as recently as last year that the triple lock should be means tested, and former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt's description of the policy as an 'anchor drag' on public finances.
Under Labour's planned reforms, the state pension will rise each year by the highest of inflation or 2.5%. It will only rise in line with earnings growth if its value has slipped behind recent wage growth. Bell, the MP for Swansea West since 2024, retained his role as pensions minister when the government came to power in July, working between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions.
For UK savers and pensioners, Labour's reforms mean state pensions would rise more slowly than under the current triple lock, but the Conservatives' alternative would likely require people to work longer before accessing their pension.