Keeping the triple lock would force state pension age above 70, Bell says

Government estimates put unreformed triple lock costs at £50bn by 2050

Treasury pensions minister Torsten Bell said a Conservative government would have to raise the state pension age above 70 if it kept the triple lock on the state pension. Bell said the cost of leaving the triple lock unreformed would reach £50bn by 2050, according to government estimates, and argued that a Conservative government would repeat the approach the party took in the 2010s and speed up planned increases to the pension age. The Conservatives have attacked the reform and said they would stick with the guarantee.

The triple lock raises the state pension each year by the largest of three figures: inflation, 2.5% or earnings growth. Under the reforms Labour has announced, the pension will rise each year by the higher of inflation or 2.5%, and will rise in line with earnings growth only if its value has slipped behind recent wage growth. The changes are due to come into force in the next parliament, with the initial proceeds earmarked for Andy Burnham’s national care service.

Earnings growth is the leg of the arrangement that decides whether the pension has kept pace with pay. The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker, a three-month moving average of U.S. median wage growth for continuously employed workers, stood at 3.9% as of 11 November 2026, according to FRED series FRBATLWGT3MMAUMHWGO. The series tracks U.S. median pay rather than UK earnings, so it describes the wage-growth backdrop rather than an input to the British formula.

Bell said the Conservatives had already shown what they would do. “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,” he said. “We don’t need to guess what they would do because they’ve literally just done it, which is they repeatedly and at very short notice accelerated the increases in the state pension age.” He said they did so in 2011 and in 2014. “Some people had as little as five years’ notice.”

In 2013, the then chancellor, George Osborne, described increasing the pension age as “one of the less controversial things we have done”, which had nevertheless delivered “absolutely enormous savings”.

The state pension age, now under review, is already expected to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046; Bell claimed the Conservatives would end up going further. “All I’m saying is, Conservatives do raise the state pension age aggressively, and they have,” he said. “And even though they know that the triple lock should change, they are opposing it – and the consequence of that is they would end up making people wait into their 70s.”

The triple lock had previously been seen as too politically risky to reform, particularly in the light of the backlash against Labour’s plan to remove the winter fuel allowance from the vast majority of pensioners, which was subsequently abandoned. Bell said the public would prefer Burnham’s willingness to make an argument to what he claimed was the Conservatives’ failure to be honest.

Bell said: “I think this is a bigger problem for Kemi Badenoch than she thinks. She thinks that her brand is principled, know what you think, tell it straight. And on this, she has done the opposite – we know that she knows it needs to change.” He cited the Conservative leader’s own suggestion, as recently as last year, that the triple lock should be means tested, and former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s claim that the policy was an “anchor drag” on the public finances. “The triple lock kind of is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that there’s anything fiscally responsible about modern Conservatism,” Bell said.

Bell, the MP for Swansea West since 2024, was previously director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank. He retained his role as pensions minister — working between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions — when Burnham came to power in July.

He said the prime minister’s 10-year plan, which may now be delayed until the new year, will include a promise of a better deal for future pensioners. “It’s just really important to be able to say to people, ‘the comfortable retirement that your parents had: we’re going to make sure that today’s private sector workers have got those’,” he added.

Bell said Badenoch had attacked the reforms without being clear about how the party would meet the costs of keeping the triple lock. What is settled so far is that Labour’s announced changes take effect in the next parliament and that the initial proceeds go to Burnham’s national care service; the review of the state pension age remains open, with the pension age already expected to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046.