Source: The Guardian, “‘Costing billions’: is the pensions triple lock a lifeline or simply unaffordable?”, published 12 September 2026, ahead of the Budget scheduled for 28 October 2026. State Pension rates and rules below are GOV.UK’s own published figures for 2026/27. Cost figures are from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility; the Resolution Foundation quote is from its own 10 June 2026 press release.
Our view
The state pension is now the single biggest item pushing up welfare spending this Parliament, and the triple lock is the specific mechanism making it grow faster than prices or wages alone would. It is also, on Age UK’s account, the reason today’s pensioners are not living through the kind of real-terms decline that hit the basic pension through the 1980s and 1990s. Our view: the argument will continue beyond this Budget. You can check your own State Pension forecast and what the published rate means in pounds.
What the triple lock is
Each April, the State Pension rises by whichever is highest of three figures: growth in average earnings, measured May to July; the rise in prices, measured by CPI inflation to September; or a floor of 2.5%. Introduced in 2011, the floor is the part that makes it expensive over time — even in a year of flat wages and low inflation, the pension still rises by at least 2.5%.
The last four years brought rises of 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025 and 4.8% in 2026, mostly because of the inflation spike of 2022–23 and the earnings growth that followed it. The full new State Pension went from £230.25 a week in 2025/26 to £241.30 a week in 2026/27 — £12,547.60 a year — on 35 qualifying years of National Insurance. Anyone who reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016 is more likely on the older basic State Pension, which rose from £176.45 to £184.90 a week over the same period, £9,614.80 a year, usually topped up by an additional or graduated pension on top of that base figure.
Why it’s under pressure right now
The Institute for Fiscal Studies puts total State Pension spending at roughly £154bn this year, about £16bn a year higher than it would have been without the triple lock. The Office for Budget Responsibility, in its own words, says the policy “has cost around three times more than initial expectations” because of how volatile both inflation and wage growth have been since 2020. Looking further out, projections for keeping the triple lock through to 2050 put the added annual cost in a range between £5bn and £40bn a year in today’s money, with £20bn a commonly used central figure. The range is wide because it depends on decades of future inflation and earnings.
Ruth Curtice, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, called it “a terribly designed policy that has proven to be far more expensive than originally planned” in a June 2026 statement, and the think tank has argued a smoothed earnings link would achieve the same protection at a fraction of the cost. The British Chambers of Commerce has called for the money to be redirected toward youth unemployment. Age UK takes the opposite view: that the triple lock is what rebuilt the pension’s value after decades in which it fell behind average earnings, and that unpicking it risks recreating that decline. Both main parties have committed to keep the triple lock for the rest of this Parliament, so this Budget itself is not expected to change the mechanism. The debate is about what happens after 2029.
Illustrative figures, built on the published 2026/27 rate and a hypothetical run of identical future rises applied to two different starting points. Take the £5.29-a-week gap above and run it forward. If both the actual £241.30 rate and the floor-only £236.01 rate then received identical 3% rises for the next four years, an assumption to show the mechanism, the actual path reaches £271.59 a week by 2030/31, while the floor-only path reaches £265.64. The gap has grown from £5.29 a week to £5.95 a week, without a single year of different treatment after the first. Every future rise is a percentage of whatever base a pensioner is already on, so one smaller uprating early on carries through the rest of a retirement.
What you can check this week
- Check your own forecast. gov.uk/check-state-pension takes about fifteen minutes and shows your own qualifying years, gaps and forecast.
- Know the full rate. The full new State Pension for 2026/27 is £12,547.60 a year. Our pension reality check explains how workplace and personal pensions add to it.
- Future rises may be smaller than in 2023 to 2026. Those four years were unusually large because inflation and wages were both volatile, which the OBR gives as the reason the policy has cost more than expected.
- Work out your own number for “enough.” Our when can you retire guide works out a date and a figure from your own income and spending.
- Note 28 October. Both main parties have committed to keep the triple lock for the rest of this Parliament.
What is still uncertain
Nothing has been decided. Both the government and the opposition have said the triple lock is safe for the rest of this Parliament, which runs to 2029. What happens beyond that — whether it survives the next manifesto round, whether a smoothed earnings link replaces it, whether the 2.5% floor is the part that goes first is not known. The current rates are £241.30 a week on the full new State Pension, £184.90 on the full basic State Pension, both current for the 2026/27 tax year, both published by GOV.UK.
For whether your National Insurance record reaches the years needed for the full rate, see our pension reality check and the low earners’ pension tax relief top-up.