Under-Secretary of State for Pensions Torsten Bell explained pension age changes (Image: Parliament TV)
The government has given an update on plans to raise the state pension to 68 – and highlighted a key date for the decision. From next month the process of raising the age people get pensions from begins.
The State Pension age for men and women will now increase to 67 between 2026 and 2028. And there is a further rise planned to 68 – and the government is carrying out a review to determine when this will happen.
As it stands April 2026, the UK State Pension age will begin rising from 66 to 67 for individuals born on or after 6 April 1960. This phased increase, designed to reach 67 by April 2028, affects anyone born after this date. Those born between 6 April 1960 and 5 March 1961 will reach their state pension age at 66 years and a specified number of months, rather than exactly 66. For more information on the timetable click here.
Work and Pensions questions today at Parliament, was told that the independent report, being directed by Dr Suzy Morrissey is aiming to create a framework for setting the State Pension Age in future decades.
At today’s committee Labour committee chair Debbie Abrahams asked when the report was going to come back: “Suzy Morrissey is currently conducting her review into state pension age and she’s due to report in the spring. Now the spring is quite a wide time frame. So when do you think, and this is an interim report before her final one at the beginning of next year, but when do you expect to receive that interim report?”
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions Torsten Bell explained when the final report would be made~: “The independent review we’ve asked them to consider the framework for thinking about the right level for the state pension age (SPA). Obviously, it’s the statute that requires the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the SPA. I’m not going to get into the timings for that today. There’s a formal process for that. I haven’t received the independent review yet, but obviously what is set out in the legislation is that we’ll need to finish the Secretary of State’s review by March 2029.”
Ms Abrahams highlighted the issue that although life expectancy overall is on the up, influencing the decision to raise the SPA, in some parts of the country it is not, potentially unfairly hitting some of the poorest. She asked: “At all levels of the income spectrum, life expectancy has increased as has healthy life expectancy. But it is increased much more slowly for low-income households for particular groups of the country.
“So, given that, what are the considerations that are going to be taken into account, or for areas like mine in Oldham, where there has actually been a fall in life expectancy?”
Mr Bell said: ”A lot but I think that is I think one of the problems so there is if I take the long view of the last like you know state pension increases have been going on for different reasons since the early 90s then If you take the long view, there’s obviously to some degree a a consensus that as you see increases in longevity that there will be consequential changes in the state pension age to some degree.
“I think what sometimes flips too easily is being relaxed about that, not weighing that. So you can take the fiscal constraints seriously, you can take seriously the need to support people working into later life while taking very seriously the consequences and the distributional effects of those consequences of increases in the SBA. And if I was looking at the changes in 2011, for example, there and some of the comments I saw from then ministers after very fast accelerations of the state pension age, I would say they weren’t weighing those consequences seriously enough in the way they went about it.”
The timetable for the increase in the State Pension age from 67 to 68 could change as a result of a future review. Before any future changes could become law, Parliament would need to approve the plans.
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