The OBR has published Britain's fifty-year sums. Every one of them assumes you are at work
Corrected 10 July 2026. This piece was published on 9 July 2026 carrying three claims that did not survive a reading of the OBR's Fiscal risks and sustainability report itself. The report was read in full on 10 July; the errors came from relying on a news agency's summary of it. First, we wrote that the triple lock accounts for about a third of the rise in state pension spending. That figure is not in the OBR's report. The OBR does not give the triple lock a share of the pension rise at all. Where it does give a fraction, it says that uprating the state pension with average earnings instead of the triple lock would make the whole projected rise in day-to-day government spending about a fifth smaller. On the OBR's own numbers, state pension spending rises from about 5 per cent of GDP to about 9 per cent under the triple lock, and to about 7 per cent under earnings uprating, which points nearer a half than a third. The sentence has been rewritten to say what the OBR says. Second, we wrote that debt rises to about 300 per cent of GDP by 2075-76. That number is widely reported and is consistent with the report's charts, but it does not appear in the report's text, and we had not opened the chart data. We had taken it from the agency. The sentence now uses the OBR's own words instead: debt stabilises just under 100 per cent of GDP in 2030-31, starts rising again from 2032-33, and reaches what the OBR calls a clearly unsustainable upward trajectory by the late 2040s. Third, we attributed a quotation to Tom Josephs of the OBR that we had not found in the report or in any OBR release. It came to us through the agency's copy. It has been removed. We do not publish quotations we have not read at source. And the correction that matters most, because it went to the argument and not to a number. The piece said that nobody was asking what happens to public receipts if the amount of paid work in Britain shrinks, and that the question was not on anybody's list. That is wrong. The OBR's receipts chapter carries a box, on page 86, titled "The potential impact of AI on the labour share and tax receipts", and the report's own executive summary names the risk that AI-driven productivity gains shift the economy out of highly taxed wages and into lightly taxed profits. We asserted an absence we had not checked. The passage has been rewritten to say what is in the report. The £15.5 billion and £5.2 billion triple-lock costings are now attributed to the Resolution Foundation, which is where they come from. No other figure in the piece has moved. The piece's central argument, that the fifty-year projection rests on Britons working and paying tax into their late sixties, stands, and the OBR's own box is now the evidence for it rather than the hole in it.
On Tuesday 7 July, at the Darlington Economic Campus, the Office for Budget Responsibility published its Fiscal risks and sustainability report. It projects the public finances fifty years out, to 2075-76. The OBR is careful to say these are not forecasts. They are illustrations of what happens if nothing changes.
What happens, on the OBR's baseline, is this. Debt is forecast to stabilise at just under 100 per cent of the size of the economy in 2030-31. It then starts rising again from 2032-33 and, in the OBR's own words, reaches a clearly unsustainable upward trajectory by the late 2040s. By 2075-76 the government would be running a primary deficit of about 7 per cent of GDP, and paying about 12 per cent of GDP in interest. State pension spending goes from about 5 per cent of GDP to about 9 per cent. Education spending falls, from 4.3 per cent to 3.4 per cent, because there will be fewer children. Other welfare spending stays roughly flat at about 6 per cent.
The triple lock, which raises the state pension each year by whichever is highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent, is one of the two things driving that rise. The other is an ageing population. The OBR does not put a figure on the triple lock's share. What it does say is that if the state pension were uprated with average earnings instead, pension spending would land nearer 7 per cent of GDP than 9, and the whole projected rise in day-to-day government spending would be about a fifth smaller. The lock has cost far more than anyone budgeted for when it was introduced in 2012, because inflation and earnings have both been volatile. The Resolution Foundation put the bill at around £15.5 billion a year by 2029-30, against the £5.2 billion a year originally costed.
The report does not tell governments what to do. It shows them the size of the choices. Uprate the state pension with average earnings instead of the triple lock and pension spending lands nearer 7 per cent of GDP. Uprate income tax thresholds with inflation rather than earnings, and the debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of the projection is roughly half what the baseline shows. Those are the two levers everybody will fight over this summer, and they are both on the spending and receipts sides of the same ledger.
That is the report. Here is where the evidence stops and this desk's read begins.
Every number above is a spending number, or a way of paying for one. Sit under all of them and you find the receipts. Receipts rest on a working population: how many people are in a job, what they earn, and what proportion of it the state takes. The OBR's economy chapter turns on productivity growth and the size of the working-age population. Its long-term spending pressures are the ones it named in advance: demography, climate change and defence.
The OBR does ask what happens to receipts if the money stops coming from wages. Its receipts chapter carries a box, on page 86, titled "The potential impact of AI on the labour share and tax receipts". And the summary names the risk out loud, in a single subordinate clause: that if faster productivity growth comes partly from more use of AI, it could arrive alongside a shift in the make-up of the economy, out of wages, which are taxed heavily, and into profits, which are not.
One clause, then back to pensions. The reporting that followed the report led on the triple lock. The whole fifty-year structure is a tower built on one plank: that Britons will be working, earning and paying tax until 67, and then 68. The OBR has written down, in a box, what it might mean if that plank moves. Nothing in this week's argument has gone anywhere near it.
**Why it matters here.** Two things in this report already touch your money. Your state pension age is moving from 66 to 67 through to 2028, so the year you can claim depends on the month you were born. And income tax thresholds are frozen, which means pay rises push more people into higher bands over time — the OBR's own scenario shows how much of the debt path that freeze is carrying. This is information about how the system works. It is not advice about what to do with your money, and this desk does not give any.
The §2A miss picked up and named: the OBR's fifty-year projections landed 7 July and this paper ran two editions past them. The founding question put to the fiscal machinery — every projection assumes a working population, and nobody is defending that assumption. Anchors T-07.
No policy verdict. The triple lock and threshold questions are presented as the OBR presents them: scenarios with costs, not recommendations. The gap named is that no party is asking about the receipts side, which is a competence charge against all of them.
- Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026. Executive summary and Chapter 1 read in full: state pension 5 to 9 per cent of GDP in the baseline and about 7 per cent under earnings uprating; primary spending 40 to 49 per cent of GDP, the rise a fifth smaller under earnings uprating; education 4.3 to 3.4 per cent; other welfare about 6 per cent; debt stabilising just under 100 per cent of GDP in 2030-31 and on a clearly unsustainable upward trajectory by the late 2040s; primary deficit about 7 per cent of GDP and debt interest about 12 per cent by 2075-76
- Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026, full report. Chapter 4, Box 4.1, page 86: The potential impact of AI on the labour share and tax receipts
- Revisiting the State Pension age: the triple lock costing around £15.5bn a year more by 2029-30, three times the initial expectation
- State Pension age review: SPA 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028; to 68 between 2044 and 2046