£15bn or Zero: IFS Warns Triple Lock Reform Cannot Fund Burnham's Care Plan
October 1, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says savings from scrapping the pension triple lock could be nothing at all, while the Health Foundation estimates Andy Burnham's National Care Service would cost £18.5 billion a year extra by 2036.
£15 billion. That is what Downing Street claims scrapping the state pension triple lock will save each year by the end of the 2030s. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the real figure could be nothing at all.
IFS Director Helen Miller told BBC Breakfast that while savings of £15 billion a year were possible by the end of the next decade, "it's also possible that you could save absolutely nothing, or a bigger sum. So it's very uncertain." The range is not a rounding error. It spans fifteen billion pounds, and neither end of it has been demonstrated.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham set out his plan in his Labour Party conference speech on 29 September. From April 2030, the triple lock, which guarantees the state pension rises each year by whichever is highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5%, would be replaced by a system rising by the higher of inflation or 2.5%, with an adjustment to track long-term earnings. Burnham told conference the change "will generate significant savings which we will use to build up our national care service."
Downing Street put a number on "significant": £15 billion a year by the end of the 2030s, equivalent to £11 billion in today's money, though it provided no workings. The IFS estimates the reform will save around £4 billion a year in today's money by 2035. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government's own official forecaster, found no significant saving before 2034. By 2040, the OBR estimated the annual saving at 0.2% of GDP, equivalent to £6 billion a year in today's money.
The gap between Downing Street's £11 billion and the IFS's £4 billion matters because the Health Foundation estimates that a universal and comprehensive social care system in England would cost around £18.5 billion a year extra by 2036. Jonathan Cribb of the IFS was direct: the pension reform "will not be the answer to funding universal social care." Burnham, speaking to Times Radio, acknowledged the arithmetic: "If there's a shortfall, well, we'd have to be honest about that shortfall and say where that money is coming from."
The uncertainty is structural. The cost of the triple lock is tied to future wage growth and inflation, which no model can forecast reliably over a decade. The IFS notes the change "could easily save nothing at all if earnings growth is strong." Miller added that the government "should probably think of this as being an unfunded thing," arguing that removing one unfunded commitment does not automatically fund a new one and that ministers "will need to find some new money."
For scale, the IFS calculates that the existing triple lock has pushed annual state pension spending £16 billion above what it would have cost had the pension risen in line with average earnings growth since 2011. The state pension bill is expected to hit £154 billion this year. Those costs are real and already incurred. The prospective savings are, by the IFS's own account, a range that includes zero.
The government has not published the model behind its £15 billion figure. Until it does, the National Care Service rests on arithmetic that the country's leading independent fiscal body says could return nothing, and on a prime minister who has already told the public he will need to find more money if the sums do not work out.
Published October 1, 2026 · Frisian News