UK pensions set to rise with wages. Such rises were mostly confirmed by Budget day.
Wages in Britain grew 3.9% in the year to July, so the state pension should rise by that much next April under the triple lock.
What happened
Official figures on showed that average pay, bonuses included, grew 3.9% in May to July, which under the triple lock would lift the full new state pension to £250.70 a week from .
The state pension rises each April by the highest of three numbers: September inflation, this wage figure for May to July, or 2.5%. This rule is called the triple lock. The new wage figure was down from 4.2% in the previous three months. Pay without bonuses grew 3.5%. Inflation for August, published the next day, was 3.1%.
A 3.9% rise would take the full new state pension from £241.30 to £250.70 a week. That is £13,036.40 a year, an increase of £488, and above the £12,570 a person can earn before paying income tax. Pensions minister Torsten Bell said pensioners just over that line would not pay small amounts of tax in this Parliament. He said the Chancellor would give the details at the Budget.
Chancellor John Healey has set his first Budget for . Labour promised at the 2024 election to keep the triple lock until 2029.
Others want it changed. The British Chambers of Commerce has called for the triple lock to be scrapped, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies puts this year’s state pension bill at £154bn. Lord Jim O’Neill, a former economic adviser to Andy Burnham, told the BBC that 30-year borrowing costs at their highest since 1998 would force Labour to deal with the triple lock.
Sources: BBC (2), ONS (2), GOV.UK, The Guardian
The Pattern
We looked at every year since the triple lock began in 2011 when the September wage figure was the highest of the three numbers. There are seven: 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025. We checked when the government formally confirmed a rise in line with wages, in a Budget speech or a written statement to Parliament. Labour took over in , so only two of the seven decisions were made by the party now in power.
Show the other 5 cases
The Read
History points to a confirmation on Budget day. In five of the seven years the government confirmed the rise by the day of the autumn Budget. Under Labour both confirmations came on that day, in 2024 in the Chancellor’s speech and in 2025 in a statement published with it. It never confirmed a rise within a month of the wage figure, so silence in September and early October tells us nothing.
The two misses were different. In 2018 the full rise came 25 days after the Budget, in a written statement. In 2021 the wage link was set aside. The record is also narrow. The Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions made all seven decisions, and Andy Burnham and John Healey have not made this one before. Inflation is very unlikely to take over: it would need to jump more than 0.8 points from August’s 3.1%, and the biggest August to September jump in the ONS figures since 1989 was 0.7 points, in 2011.
The prediction fails if Healey changes the rule for , for example by using pay without bonuses, which grew 3.5%, or if the confirmation comes after Budget day, as in 2018. Against a change, Labour’s promise runs to 2029, and the pensions minister’s comments on tax already assume the higher pension. The wage figure itself can still move. In 2025 the September estimate was 4.7% and the rate used was 4.8%, which is why both markets ask about a rise in line with wages and name no exact number.
Disclaimer
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