Rishi Sunak has come under further pressure to suspend the state pension triple lock after wage figures showed that the chancellor is on course to pay pensioners a rise of more than 8% next year.

Sunak is understood to be considering telling Britain’s 12 million state pension claimants that the pandemic has artificially inflated the official wages figures and a new formula is needed to calculate the rise in the basic state pension for next year.

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The decade-old triple lock, which Boris Johnson’s government pledged to maintain at the 2019 election, is underpinned by a promise to pay either 2.5%, the rate of inflation, or the level of earnings recorded in the July employment figures.

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In the latest official figures for June, earnings increased by 8.8% including bonuses and analysts said they were on course to remain above 8% next month, setting the stage for a political battle over the triple lock.

Sunak has responded to calls for pensions payments to rise by 2.5%, or to track inflation – which is expected to hit 4% this year – by saying he will leave a decision until the autumn.

Julian Jessop, an economics adviser to the free-market thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, said each percentage point increase in earnings growth will add about £900m to annual spending on state pensions, next year and in future years. A rise based on the latest official figures would therefore cost the exchequer at least £5bn more than a 2.5% increase.

“The pay data have been distorted by the pandemic in ways that no one could have anticipated,” he said. “Unless the triple lock is changed, this will provide an unintended windfall to pensioners that is increasingly hard to justify.”

Read more @The Guardian