Tories would need pension age above 70 to keep triple lock, says Bell

Keeping the triple lock unchanged would cost the state £50 billion a year by 2050, according to government estimates — and Treasury minister Torsten Bell says Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives would have to raise the state pension age above 70 to pay for it.

Bell, the pensions minister working between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, made the claim as Labour pushes reforms to the triple lock that would take effect in the next parliament, with the initial proceeds earmarked for Andy Burnham's national care service. The Conservatives have attacked the move and insisted they would keep the triple lock, which raises the state pension each year in line with the largest of inflation, 2.5%, or earnings growth.

What does Bell say the Tories would actually do?

He argues a Tory government would repeat its 2010s playbook: accelerating planned increases to the state pension age at short notice.

"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. "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 pointed to accelerations in 2011 and 2014. "Some people had as little as five years' notice," he said. That is the difference between planning a retirement date and having it moved out from under you within a single decade of working life.

The precedent carries weight. In 2013, then chancellor George Osborne described raising the pension age as "one of the less controversial things we have done" — one that had nevertheless delivered "absolutely enormous savings." The state pension age, now under review, is already expected to rise to 68 between 2044 and 2046. Bell claims the Conservatives would go 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 government has not published a precise costing of how a pension age above 70 would interact with the £50 billion figure, so Bell's claim rests on the pattern of past behaviour rather than a stated Conservative proposal. The Conservatives have announced no such plan.

Why is Labour willing to touch the triple lock now?

The triple lock had been viewed as too politically risky to reform, especially after the backlash against Labour's plan to remove the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners — a plan later abandoned.

Bell argued the public would prefer Burnham's willingness to make an argument to what he called Conservative dishonesty. "I think this is a bigger problem for Kemi Badenoch than she thinks," he said. "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 Badenoch's own 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 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.

Under Labour's reforms, the state pension would rise each year by the higher of inflation or 2.5%, rising with earnings growth only when its value has slipped behind recent wage growth.

What comes next?

Bell, MP for Swansea West since 2024 and formerly director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, retained his ministerial role when Burnham came to power in July. He said the prime minister's 10-year plan — which may now slip to the new year — will promise 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 said. Whether that promise survives contact with the fiscal arithmetic — the same arithmetic Bell wields against the Tories — will define the pensions debate into the next parliament.