Labour’s move to scrap the state pension triple lock isn’t the end of the war on pensioners. It’s scarcely even the beginning.
Andy Burnham’s attack on the triple lock is only the start (Image: Getty)
The triple lock has worked wonders. Collectively, state pensioners get £16 billion more a year than if the state pension had simply risen with earnings, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That’s worth £800 each year. Burnham says he will scrap the current system from 2030 if Labour is in power. Which is terrible news. Many older people already feel under siege. The attack on pensioners has been building for years, especially on the left. There’s even a phrase for it: intergenerational warfare.
Young people feel older people got lucky. They could afford to buy homes, allowing them to build up wealth over time. The economy and wages were growing, but both have stagnated since the financial crisis two decades ago. Jobs are worryingly scarce today, partly due to Rachel Reeves’s insane decision to make younger workers more expensive to employ.
But the idea that older people had it easy is a fantasy. They toiled for decades just to build up a threadbare state pension, and now that’s under attack. And the real beneficiaries of those higher house prices will be the younger generation when they inherit. Rachel Reeves blitzed them anyway.
Andy Burnham outlines proposed changes to pensions Triple Lock
She began by snatching the winter fuel payment from pensioners on as little as £11,350 a year, before the outcry forced a U-turn. She’s also dragged unused pensions into the inheritance tax net, hiked taxes on any capital gains and dividends, imposed a 2% tax surcharge on savings and rental incomes, and dragged more pensioners into the income tax net by extending the freeze on the £12,570 personal allowance.
Don’t think it’s just Labour. It was Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who unleashed the income tax threshold freeze. He also went in hard on capital gains and dividends, and capped tax-free pension cash withdrawals at £268,275, a threshold that may never rise again.
Hunt’s 4p cut to National Insurance didn’t help pensioners, because they don’t pay it. Yet even Hunt wouldn’t touch the triple lock, and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is standing by it today. So is Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK. But I’m wondering how deep that commitment is.
It suits Badenoch and Farage for Burnham to attack the triple lock and take the flak today. But can we rely on them to reinstate it afterwards?
This morning, Badenoch admitted it would be “difficult” to reinstate the triple lock if it is completely scrapped or reformed. And she’s right. The money will be instantly spent elsewhere. Burnham would blow it in a heartbeat. Once the triple lock is gone, it’s never coming back. The PM knows that.
Which is why the Express is fighting to defend it today. Because if the triple lock falls, this won’t mark the end of the war on pensioners. It won’t even be the beginning of the end.