State Pension Triple Lock

David Johnston Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

rose—

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way to my hon. Friend from Leicester, given that I am a Leicester MP, and then let the hon. Gentleman in.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on, as she always is. May I also say what a pleasure it is to see her back defending the people of Leicester West after her maternity leave.

[David Johnston]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, given that the Government are making their announcement about the triple lock next week and that it takes effect in April, it is therefore irresponsible to suggest that pensioners will face the sort of cuts that he is talking about? We should just wait for the announcement.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I do not know if the hon. Gentleman was in the House about three weeks ago, but that was when the then Conservative Prime Minister committed from the Dispatch Box to maintain the triple lock. If the hon. Gentleman wants to stand up for the 21,000 pensioners in the Wantage area who are set to lose £425 from a real-terms cut, he should vote with us in the Lobby this afternoon.

Let me make a bit of progress. A £900 cut in income, around £37 per month, is punishing at the best of times, and it is a cut for people who feel they have paid their dues—people who, like my mum, feel they have paid their stamps. It is a cut for those who have worked all their lives and who often live now with a disability or in ill health because of their hard work. Whether because of the hard, unyielding occupations that they may have worked in, they might live with chapped hands, sore backs and sore knees. They deserve a retirement of security, dignity and respect. It would be a betrayal of Britain’s almost 13 million pensioners to cut the pension a second year in a row, and this House should not stand for it.

Why has the triple lock been in the Chancellor’s crosshairs? It is because Conservative Members presented, cheered and welcomed the most disastrous Budget in living memory. It was a Budget so reckless and so cavalier with the public finances that it crashed the economy with unfunded tax cuts, sent borrowing costs soaring, gave us a run on pension funds, and forced mortgage rates to ricochet round the money markets, costing homeowners hundreds of pounds extra a month, and now they want us all to think it was just an aberration—that it was all just a bad dream; that Bobby Ewing was in the shower all along. But for the British people it remains a real nightmare, and now the Government are expecting pensioners to pay the price. Well, we will not stop reminding them of the Budget that they imposed on the British people.

In recent days, ahead of this debate, I have been inundated with messages from Britain’s retirees saying that that price is far too high. This was what Hilda wrote:

“We believed that with the triple lock in place, our state pension would keep pace with wages and inflation…This government cynically dismantled the triple lock and threw state pensioners under the bus”.

This was what Mary wrote to me:

“I am in tears of frustration and anger…Not all pensioners are well off. I for one am really struggling”.

This was from Patrick, who is aged 73:

“How can a responsible government minister welch on a promise?”

That is the crux of the matter, because every Government Member stood on a manifesto in 2019 that made a clear promise to the triple lock.

Six months ago, the Prime Minister, when he was the Chancellor, told us from that Dispatch Box that the promise of inflation-proofing the state pension would be honoured for the next financial year:

“I can reassure the House that next year…benefits will be uprated by this September’s consumer prices index”.

He went on:

“the triple lock will apply to the state pension.”—[Official Report, 26 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 452.]

Those were the Prime Minister’s words six months ago. He tells us that we should not have a general election because that 2019 manifesto gives him a mandate, but he will not give us a straight answer to a very simple question: will he honour the promise he made from the Dispatch Box six months ago? So much for his promise to restore “integrity and professionalism” to Downing Street.

A year ago, the House debated breaking the triple lock. The then Pensions Minister, now promoted to Minister for Employment as Minister of State—I congratulate him of course, and I am pleased that he is back in the Department after a brief period away—last year justified cutting the state pension, telling us it was only for one year. Just a year ago, on 15 November 2021, he said:

“The triple lock will, I confirm, be applied in the usual way for the rest of the Parliament.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2021; Vol. 703, c. 372.]

So what has changed?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

Today’s motion is curious because, next week, we will get the decision on this issue, but let us leave that aside for a moment. Last year, I spoke in a debate on the triple lock. At that point, we had the highest level of basic state pension in relation to earnings in 34 years. At that point, it had increased by £2,050—it is now £2,300. Along with auto-enrolment, that has been one of the most significant policy decisions taken by this Government not just in pension policy, but in domestic policy much more broadly. We now have more than 19 million people auto-enrolled in workplace pensions, which is a fantastic achievement. But of course we do not just support our pensioners via the triple lock, generous though that has been. We know that pensioners spend a higher proportion of their money on energy, and there they have had a £400 reduction. They have had an energy price guarantee, which will save, on average, £700, and a winter fuel payment topped up by a pensioner cost of living payment, worth up to another £600.

We have to think about the poorest pensioners and not just think about pensioners as one big group. There we see a further cost of living payment of £650. We see cold weather payments if the temperature of their homes drops below a certain level. Underpinning both those things, we see pension credit. We have to get more people to claim it who are eligible for it because it is worth on average £3,300, which is yet more support. Time and again, both on the triple lock and on the other support the Government give, they have been very generous and constantly thought about how best to support pensioners.

When it comes to Labour motions and Labour Front-Bench speeches, I look for what is not there as much as what is. The motion is specifically about keeping the triple lock for the coming year. As I say, we will get the decision next week. The motion does not say where to get the money for that, but let us leave that to one side for now, even though it is several billion pounds. More importantly, it does not say anything about what should happen beyond that. I listened carefully to the shadow Secretary of State to see what his view on future pension policy might be, but I am afraid that I did not hear much. That is notable because week in, week out in this House what we are hearing from the Front Benchers is, “The next Labour Government will do this” and, “The next Labour Government will do that” but we did not hear that today on pension policy.

Pensions are the second highest category of expenditure after health, so a party that hopes to form a Government ought to have a view about what it wants to do on pension policy that is not just, “We will continue Conservative policies” or “We will support all the expenditure but we will not support any reductions in other areas.” I hope that in his wind-up we might hear from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), for whom I have a lot of time, what Labour’s view of pensions might be. If the answer is, “We would have to look at the finances to understand what we will do” that is precisely what the Government have been doing to form their decisions next week.