Silver Voices director Dennis Reed warns that the PM “is going to be stung very badly indeed”
Andy Burnham is scrapping the triple lock (Image: Getty)
Andy Burnham has stirred a hornet’s nest by planning to scrap the triple lock, and he is going to be stung very badly indeed.
Quite apart from the gross injustice of cutting this essential safeguard against pensioner poverty, he has now let it be known that he intends to force through his plans in this Parliament.
Burnham would have no mandate for such a move, as Labour unequivocally promised in its 2024 manifesto that “it would retain the triple lock for the state pension”. Introducing legislation to scrap the Lock in this Parliament would clearly breach that pledge.
It is hypocritical in the extreme that Burnham intends to put his social care plans to the electorate at the next General Election, but not the source of the funding for it.
It is obvious that Burnham recognises that his only option to break the lock is to use his huge majority, and his political honeymoon, to steamroller legislation through, before public dissent forces the possibility of a U-turn, as happened over the winter fuel fiasco.
Well, we are ready to take him on. We have relaunched our mass petition to save the triple lock, which has already put on thousands more signatures, now approaching 300,000.
Whenever he chooses to bring forward the legislation, we will launch a mass lobbying campaign, warning MPs that their electoral chances will be severely damaged if they vote for this attack on poor pensioners.
We will point out that the large majority of pensioners receive the old state pension at the princely sum of £185 per week, and to reduce the relative value of that represents one of the evilest political moves in recent years.
Labour intends to save £15 billion over 10 years by these plans, every penny pinched from state pensions that would have been received under the triple lock.
With the cost-of-living crisis spiralling out of control, millions of older people will be worrying about how they are going to heat their homes and feed themselves this winter. We need these further threats to our living standards like a hole in the head.
Dennis Reed is director of the Silver Voices campaign group