There has been the usual flurry of misleading headlines around the Prime Minister’s pledge to maintain the so-called triple lock in place for the 2015-20 Parliament. The Daily Mail described it as a “bumper £1,000 a year rise”. Section 150A of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, as amended in 2010, already requires the Secretary of State to uprate the amount of the Basic State Pension (and the Standard Minimum Guarantee in Pension Credit) at least in line with the increase in the general level of earnings every year, so the “bumper” rise would only be as a result of earnings growth continuing to grind along at its current negative real rate.

However, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is currently predicting the various elements of the triple lock to develop up until 2018 as follows:

The OBR have of course not got a great track record on predicting such things, but all the same I was curious about where the Daily Mail’s number could have come from.

The Pensions Policy Institute’s (PPI’s) report on the impact of abandoning the triple lock in favour of just a link to earnings growth estimates the difference in pension in today’s money could be £20 per week, which might be the source of the Daily Mail figure, but not until 2065! I think if we maintain a consistent State Pensions policy for over 50 years into the future a rise of £20 per week in its level will be the least remarkable thing about it.

The PPI’s assumption is that the triple lock, as opposed to what is statutorily required, would make a difference to the State Pension increase of 0.26% a year on average. It is a measure of how small our politics has become that this should be headline news for several days.