THE retirement age would have to rise above average life expectancy in 162 Scottish neighbourhoods if state pensions increases are to be maintained at current levels, MPs have warned.

Maintaining the so-called “triple lock” would see the pensionable age rise to 70.5 by 2060 and it needs to be “retired”, the Commons Work and Pensions Committee said. It notes that is higher than people on average are expected to die in a number of areas north of the Border.

Glasgow alone has 62 neighbourhoods where male life expectancy is below 70.5, with the lowest – the Parkhead West and Barrowfield area – down to just 62.5.

Committe chairman Frank Field MP reiterated its call for the “triple lock” – which guarantees the state pension rises by average earnings, the consumer price index, or 2.5 per cent, whichever is the highest – to be scrapped, saying it had “done its job”.

The committee said research it had commissioned from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that if ministers were to index pensions to a “smoothed” earnings link – protecting the value of the pension when inflation outstripped earnings – it would save 0.8 per cent of GDP a year.

Mr Field said: “With the triple lock, the only way state pension expenditure can be made sustainable is to keep raising the state pension age. This has the effect of excluding ever more people from the state pension. Such people will disproportionately be from more deprived areas and manual occupations.”