People will be forced to work until they are aged 70 if the basic state pension is to survive into the next century, according to the Government's pensions supremo.

Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the architect of radical reforms in which the retirement age will rise to 68 by 2046, said that with no limit in sight for life expectancy, people are going to have to work even longer than he proposed.

In an interview with The Times marking the 100th anniversary of the creation of the state pension on August 1, 1908, Lord Turner predicted that a future government would reopen the question of raising the state pension age soon after it reaches 68.

“This is not the end of the story. If the value of the pension is to be protected the retirement age will have to rise again. I would be amazed if around 2055 the government of the day were not taking the retirement age higher and we'll be at 70 by the end of the century,” he said.

Times Archive, 1908: Old-age pensions

If the workers are to have the right to a pension which will be withhled if they provide for themselves, what more natural than they cease from all efforts of self-denial?

• Leading article: The Pensions Bill in the Lords.

• Letter: Old-age pensions

• Letter: Pensions and party politics

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“There appears to be no upper limit on life expectancy so you are not taking retirement away from people by raising the age they stop work. People are still going to be having longer retirements despite the changes.”

He noted that when the pension was first introduced by David Lloyd George, it was paid only to those aged 70 or over, the age that he believes it will eventually be.

Experts believe that Lord Turner's recommendation to raise the retirement age to 68 — to pay for the restoration of the link to earnings — saved the pension, which was in danger of withering away as its relative value plummeted.

The Government has adopted his proposals, and the retirement age will rise to 66 in 2024, then 67 in 2034 and to 68 by 2046.

Ministers also adopted his proposal to set up a low-cost national private savings scheme to which employers must contribute. Although it is not compulsory for employees to join, it uses “the lever of inertia” by requiring them to opt out if they do not want to be members.

Last night campaigners responded angrily to his suggestion that the retirement age should keep rising.

“After a period of working of 40 or 45 years, society should endow on people a period of retirement of not just two or three years,” said Neil Duncan-Jordan, spokesman for the National Pensioners Campaign, the independent lobby group.

“If the retirement age is raised to 70 for some groups of people, especially low-paid manual workers, life expectancy is not much beyond 70 or 75. Five years is not exactly the ‘lifetime in retirement' people have been promised.”

Mervyn Kohler, head of public affairs at Help the Aged, said that ministers needed to show flexibility.

“I entirely buy the principle that links the state pension age with life expectancy, so people spend roughly the same amount of time working and in retirement. But I do not believe they should be set in concrete and future governments bound by it.

“If some experts are correct, growing rates of obesity and other health problems could lead to declining life expectancy, so the pension age should actually come down in those circumstances,” he said.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, did not oppose Lord Turner's view. “More and more governments are going to see retirement as a process and not a single date. Consequently, a single retirement age won't be as much of the future as of the past,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “Under the Pensions Act 2007 we will increase the state pension age gradually to 68 by 2046. We have no plans to increase this further at present.”

Lord Turner, who will shortly take up the reins at the Financial Services Authority and has served as Director-General of the CBI, also had harsh words for ministers who have failed to grasp the nettle of public sector pensions.

Anyone working for central or local government, the NHS, the police, the fire service and the associated regulators is still entitled to a generous final salary pension and most can retire at 60. Taxpayers are paying £21billion a year to fund these pensions.

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