From the reactions to the announcement that we will get a £500 increase in our universal wage in retirement (the state pension), you would have thought that the triple lock was responsible for political irresponsibility by economic realists. Steve Webb is both an economist and has been a politician, but he has always been good at seeing things through the eyes of the people who will get benefits and pensions from the state.

First the impact on us, the fourth lock for some people

LCP’s May 2026 analysis of what might happen to the state pension can be accessed from this link.

Much of the journalistic comment has been that the state pension will be more than the income tax allowance unless the promised tweak for pensioners is put in place. It has been speculation based on conservative adverts such as this one which is thoroughly negative and socially divisive; in short- a disgrace

Torsten Bell – subsequent to Steve Webb’s comment –  has confirmed that the budget will be used to make sure that those who just get the state pension will get it “tax free”.

There is no easy way of making the DWP a tax-payer to the Treasury but if you get a second  pension (and most of us do or will) then the state pension will eat up our nil-tax allowance and a little more, meaning that we will have to pay more tax on our second pension (whether public or private).

The £91 that would have been taken back from those with just a state pension will not be, that’s the fourth lock and shows that the intention of Government is to ensure that the floor grows as the triple lock intended, as a cash amount immune from clawbacks from HMRC. Like the net-pay resolution, it sides with those who are at the lowest earnings. This is not just politically savvy, it is socially sound.

The pay rise of more than £40 pm + will be meaningful for those who rely on the state pension and benefits in a way that can’t be imagined by those of us to whom £40 might be a round of drinks.

Can we afford it?

I was in the DWP yesterday and they did not seem particularly phased. There has been plenty of time for them to have worked on the solution with the Treasury.

We can afford to pay more than £13,ooo pa , most of our peer countries do. Those who say we cannot are economists who look into the future and consider when the increases from the triple lock will require more taxation from those who get a wage before retirement.

There is little optimism that the country’s economy can grow faster than it has the last twenty or so years. But I can see no good in supposing that it won’t return to a long-term trend in economic growth, there are plenty of good reasons to suppose that technological advantages will feed through to greater productivity.

I am with the politicians who from Reform to Labour agree that the triple lock has been jacking the state pension up to a point that everyone gets a basic wage when they reach state pension age.

The argument that this is the older voter winning out over the younger non voting worker is facetious. The young people I know find it hard to think about being 68 or older and certainly about their extending probable life expectancy. The more pessimistic see the future as time for politicians to take back what they have given to pensioners. But this pessimism isn’t founded on history, the state pension has not been cut in nominal terms. For a few years before 2010 it was not properly revalued and fell behind but every indicator is that youngsters today will have in real terms what pensioners will shortly get. Probably they will get a great deal more.

Economists want to see our pensions cease to grow in real terms. They want the economy to de-risk, assuming it will not grow. This is the economics of austerity and it has done us very little good.

There is a lobby in pensions that argues against improvements in state pension. They would like to see the automatic enrolment process require 12% to be paid into workplace pensions – second pensions. There are 45% of the nation’s adults not in a workplace pension.  The glory of the state pension is that it reaches almost everyone.

We should not be planning for our state pension to fail. The triple lock should stay and we should celebrate the £500 pa increase in the nation’s retirement wage.