Pensions & savings The triple lock has been far more damaging than I ever feared The state pension has risen three times faster than predicted when the policy was introduced 18 July 2025 by David Willetts David Willetts This article was originally published in The Times. The strained state of Britain’s public finances is already a big concern. These pressures are set to grow rather than dissipate over the coming decades. This week the Office for Budget Responsibility published a sobering report that set out some of the key long-term trends pushing up public spending. The big increase in the number of old people as the post-war baby boomers age is a significant pressure. But it has been exacerbated by the triple lock, implemented from 2011-12. The original forecast was that it would cost an extra £5.2 billion by 2029-30, rising just a bit more than earnings. But the commitment that the state pension would grow by the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent has turned out to be much more expensive than initially thought. Volatility in earnings and inflation has turned it into a much more powerful ratchet. State pension spending is now forecast to be £15.5 billion more by 2029-30 than if it had just carried on rising with earnings. These are costs the country can scarcely afford when our debt servicing costs are now as big as the education and Home Office budgets combined, estimated at £111 billion in 2025-26, when the tax burden is at a postwar high, and when many public services are in urgent need of repair. The triple lock is popular because people assume that pensioners tend to be poor. That used to be the case, but it no longer is. Pensioner poverty has been on a welcome downward trajectory for decades, and they are now about half as likely to live in poverty as children. In the early 2000s, pensioners had roughly similar income levels to families with children. Today, they are about £5,000 richer — a gap that could rise to £7,000 by the end of the decade, according to the Resolution foundation. Non-pensioners are nowadays almost twice as likely as pensioners to be living in fuel stress, defined as needing to spend more than 10 per cent of their income after housing costs on energy bills to stay warm enough. Now, the typical pensioner household is likely to have higher living standards than a working-age family. And the poorest fifth of pensioner households are better off than the poorest fifth of working-age families. On top of more generous pensions, benefit policies have also favoured older age groups. Benefits changes increased pension incomes by £900 on average between 2010-11 and 2024-25. By contrast, benefits for non-pensioners have, on average, been cut by £1,400 a year. We are increasingly aware that the response to the Covid crisis disproportionately impacted young people in the interest of protecting older people. That has also been the approach to benefits policy — year after year. Of course, we have an obligation to our pensioners, but many of them are worried about the prospects for their children and grandchildren. We should be doing more to help them. Conservative Party support is concentrated among the over-70s, who are the main beneficiaries of the two largest public spending programmes: the NHS and the state pension. Conservatives on these pages regularly talk about the party’s commitment to controlling public spending. Yet the programmes that most benefit Conservative supporters are set to carry on growing. This is an odd position for the party to be in. It is very different from Margaret Thatcher’s day when the state pension was linked to prices — compared with that method of increasing the state pension, the triple lock will have added £22.9 billion more to public spending by the end of the decade. Every election since 2015 has been marked by the main parties pledging to maintain the policy for another five years. Is it really to remain untouchable?
