Becky O'Connor, director of public affairs at PensionBee, said: "A state pension pay rise for pensioners next year will make the triple lock promise more costly than ever and call into question whether this mechanism of guaranteeing increases can continue.” With this in mind, how might the triple lock affect the state pension in the coming months?
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NewsTranscript
00:00 The so-called triple lock, in conjunction with pensions, is designed to ensure pensioners
00:05 are able to afford rising prices or can keep pace with the increases in the working population's
00:10 wages.
00:11 By April next year, it's thought that the state pension is likely to rise by 8.5%, which
00:16 would be a weekly increase of £13.30.
00:19 This means that there is set to be an annual increase on the basic state pension, taking
00:24 the total of the year to almost £9,000.
00:27 This is set to be the second significant increase in the state pension in two years, after a
00:31 10.1% increase in April of this year.
00:34 But questions have been raised over whether the cost of the funding of the policy is too
00:37 high and whether the government could better spend the money elsewhere.
00:42 The debate over fairness may also be heightened as benefits are not likely to rise quite as
00:46 much.
00:47 Neither the Conservatives nor Labour have committed to maintaining the triple lock in
00:51 their next manifesto.