PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
State Retirement Pensions (1 November 2016)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the cost of a real terms increase of (a) 1.5 and (b) 2.5 per cent in the basic state pension in each year to 2025.

Asked by:
Dr Andrew Murrison (Conservative)

The following table shows forecasts of Basic State Pension expenditure with

(1) Triple lock uprating using Budget 2016 uprating assumptions

(2) Real terms increase of 1.5% (CPI + 1.5%) using Budget 2016 CPI assumptions

(3) Real terms increase of 2.5% (CPI + 2.5%) using Budget 2016 CPI assumptions

Basic State Pension Expenditure, Budget 2016, under various uprating schemes from 2017/18 to 2020/21, £ billion

	2016/17	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21
(1) BSP expenditure, Budget 2016	69.0	68.5	68.5	68.6	68.2
(2) BSP expenditure uprated by CPI + 1.5%	69.0	68.2	67.9	68.1	67.7
(3) BSP expenditure uprated by CPI + 2.5%	69.0	68.9	69.2	70.1	70.3

Forecasts to 2025 are not available as the most recent long-term projections were published in summer 2015 and use different uprating assumptions and different underlying population projections to these Budget 2016 based forecasts.

Answered by:
Lord Harrington of Watford (Non-affiliated)
9 November 2016