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Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced her budget on Wednesday (Image: PA)
The pensions triple lock is facing fresh questions after Rachel Reeves‘s Budget. The Chancellor unveiled a 4.8% increase in the basic and new state pension next year under the policy.
The triple lock guarantees that the state pension will rise each year in line with whichever is highest out of average earnings growth, inflation, or 2.5%. But the country’s longest continuously serving MP warned the measure is “unsustainable”.
Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh told the Commons yesterday: “We all know that the triple lock is unsustainable. You cannot have a situation where people of my generation are consuming an ever-greater proportion of national wealth through the state pension.
“Frankly, our government never dared tackle it having brought it in because they knew that the Labour Party would crucify them at the ballot box.
“Now the Labour Party is caught in the same bind. The fact is, it is completely unfair on younger people if the burden of older people, through the triple lock, increases year by year.”
Conservative former minister Tom Tugendhat said there are not “enough young people for an ageing population”.
He told MPs: “The honesty is the demographics of this country are going against us.”
Mr Tugendhat continued: “That means, I’m afraid we do need to look at the triple lock.
“I have already been clear. Now, I know my front bench doesn’t agree with me, but I have been clear on this, that we simply cannot afford the level of welfare payments that we are making.
“We need to be clear that health and pensions are now costing too much.”
Campaigners insist that many pensioners living on modest incomes rely on the triple lock.
The Daily Express has run a long-standing campaign to defend the policy.
