Andy Burnham is facing growing pressure to scrap the state pension triple lock from MPs across the political spectrum, businesses and financial experts.
The British Chambers of Commerce has called on the government to ditch the policy, which guarantees the state pension rises each year by whichever is the highest out of 2.5%, inflation or wage growth.
Many argue the policy is “draining government finances”, said MoneyWeek, due to its “ever-increasing cost” since being introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in 2010. But policymakers have been “hesitant” to get rid of the triple lock because of its popularity among voters, “namely older ones”.
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Triple lock ‘has worked’
Much of the debate around the triple lock suggests that “pensioners have never had it so good”, but the reality is “very different”, said former pensions minister Steve Webb in The Telegraph. Pensioner poverty has been “rising steadily” since the early 2010s, and the state pension offers a valuable safety net with “equality” for men and women.
While it is “undoubtedly true” the triple lock will become unaffordable if it continues for ever, “now is not the time to be taking our foot off the gas”. Requiring the decision to be taken by Parliament “once every five years” is the most sensible course of action.
To “justify” the resultant “wave of retiree rage”, axing the triple lock would have to save the nation “a good chunk of money”, said Will Dunn in The New Statesman. But while it may work in the long run, scrapping it “doesn’t raise that much money in the present” – only £3.3 billion in two years. And for all the opposition, the triple lock “has worked” in providing British pensioners with greater benefits and security, particularly when measured against the cost of living.
A ‘colossal burden’
The triple lock remains only because “no one is willing to risk the wrath of British pensioners”, said Matthew Brooker on Bloomberg. If we lived in a “rational world”, at least one mainstream leader would be “brave enough” to “declare an uncomfortable but self-evident truth” that scrapping the triple lock would provide fairness and affordability. But we do not.
Since its establishment, the triple lock has become “something of a holy writ” despite its “financial and moral justification” being long gone, said Simon Kelner in The i Paper. Aside from this, the mechanism fails to account for the income differences between a “pensioner on the poverty line” and a retiree “with a large, mortgage-free home and a private pension pot”. Consequently, it is a “blunt instrument”.
The “reality” is simple, said David Blair in The Telegraph: keep the triple lock and Britain risks a spiralling national debt, with this “colossal burden” of £3 trillion passed to our children and grandchildren. It is they who will “bear the cost of the spending from which we benefited”.
Taking the decision to end the triple lock will by no means be easy – in fact “there would be many losers” – but it “would be right”.
