Should the state pension age be raised above 66? Have your say
A review into raising the state pension age is needed to ensure the system is "sustainable and affordable for generations to come", Rachel Reeves has said.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the chancellor said that as life expectancy increases, it is "right" to look at the age at which people can begin receiving their state pension.
The state pension age is currently 66, rising to 67 by 2028, and to 68 between 2044 and 2046, although some have suggested this date could be brought forward.
By the 2070s, the number of pensioners in the UK is expected to have increased by more than 50%, while the working age population will have only grown by around 10%, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said as she announced a separate review into pensions adequacy.
This clearly puts pressure on the government, with the Treasury spending around £138bn on the state pension last year, equivalent to 5% of GDP. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects this to rise to 7.7% by the early 2070s.
Head of public policy at AJ Bell, Rachel Vahey, said an ageing population "places an increasing burden on taxpayers", and that while future governments may hope for an "improved economy and growing tax receipts", this "can't be guaranteed".
The Institute for Fiscal Studies claimed increasing the state pension age is a "coherent response" to people living longer, but warned it "affects poorer people more, as well as those who find it more difficult to remain in paid work at older ages".
It said any savings from delaying payouts should be "recycled into making universal credit more generous for those in the run-up to that age".
Disabilities and caring responsibilities in older age, which could leave people unable to work, is also a consideration, with the International Longevity Centre UK noting that these factors "vary significantly by region and social class".
But what do you think, is raising the state pension age inevitable? Or do you think the current level of 66 strikes a fair balance? Let us know in the polls below.
The "elephant in the room", as Vahey describes it, is that the state pension age is "just one lever government has to help manage the cost of the state pension".
The other is reforming the triple lock, a cast-iron guarantee that state pensions will rise every year by 2.5%, CPI inflation, or the rise in average earnings, whichever is highest.
Yesterday Kendall said that the triple lock is "out of scope" of the newly resurrected Pensions Commission, which will be leading a review into the adequacy of the pensions system.
Labour has already committed to keeping the triple lock, which first came into force in 2011, for the entirety of this Parliament.
This puts considerable pressure on the Treasury's finances, however, with the OBR expecting the annual cost of this policy to reach £15.5bn by 2030.
It said spending on the policy has risen by as much as three times the figure projected in 2012 and questioned whether taxpayers can realistically continue paying for it.
'The UK cannot afford the array of promises that it has made to the public,' the fiscal watchdog's chairman Richard Hughes said.
It would be wrong to scrap the pensions triple lock to cover the cost of spiralling welfare.Pensioners on fixed incomes shouldn't pay the price for a broken system. pic.twitter.com/Izta0xiZOt
— Sir Alec Shelbrooke MP (@AlecShelbrooke) July 21, 2025
'Precisely what the government does in response to these pressures and the choices that ultimately every country is going to have to make about how they afford their welfare states and their wider public services commitments are issues for politicians.'
However, supporters of the triple lock said it helps improve the adequacy of retirement incomes for current and future pensioners, particularly those on lower incomes.
A Commons research briefing added that the UK state pension is "low in an international context", with separate Parliamentary figures showing an overall 55.4% replacement rate of pre-retirement earnings from mandatory pensions, compared to an average of 61.4% among similar economies.
The government may have tied its hands for now on this issue, but Vahey said that if the newly announced review calls for the state pension age timetable to be accelerated, it "could provide some cover for future governments to look at reforming the triple lock" to avert more dramatic rises.Come back on Friday to read the results and analysis via the link below.
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