Pensions Triple Lock

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Thirty years ago, nearly one in three pensioners in our country lived in poverty. Today, that figure has halved, thanks in no small part to the decisions made by our party, when in government, to stand by pensioners—people who have done the right thing, worked all their lives and paid into the system. That is the fair and right thing to do. Yet we are faced with a Government that do not seem concerned about what is fair and right. Can the Secretary of State explain why his party has chosen to go after pensioners instead of tackling the fastest growing part of the benefits bill: working-age welfare?

Working-age benefits are costing us £140 billion a year, and rising fast. That includes the cost of benefits to 6 million working-age people who are not working. Many could and should be, but instead they are spending decades of their lives on benefits; it is unaffordable and morally wrong. However, the Secretary of State has done nothing of substance about it, and now his party’s refusal to bring down the welfare bill is putting the state pension in jeopardy.

The Prime Minister is desperate for cash to pay for his new national care service—that is why he is ditching the triple lock. Let’s not beat around the bush and say that it is some kind of adjustment—it is ditching the triple lock. To look at the numbers, the savings that the Secretary of State is hoping for will hardly touch the sides. Come the mid-2030s, a national care service is forecast to cost over £18 billion, versus potentially £4 billion a year in savings from the triple lock. Those numbers are extremely uncertain; the care service could well cost more—demand tends to grow for something that is free—but scrapping the triple lock could save less. At the very least, Labour’s policy creates a £15 billion black hole in the public finances.

And what a way to announce it: a couple of lines in a conference speech—no proper explanation or detail, just millions of pensioners left wondering what it means for their retirement. Labour Back Benchers should remember how these things go. Their last Prime Minister came after pensioners’ winter fuel payments. That was not a plan that stood the test of time; it was the Government’s first U-turn. How many Labour Members in the Chamber today defended that ill-conceived policy, only to see it abandoned in the face of pressure?

Listening to the Secretary of State’s statement, it is clear that he is branding this plan as the Pensions Minister’s idea. It is not his first rodeo. I suspect he can see that this is a U-turn in waiting. How long has it got? And all this before the Government’s own Pensions Commission has even reported. Did the Secretary of State forget that he had one? The Government asked it to look at whether people will have enough to live on in retirement. Why bother asking for independent advice if he has already made up his mind on the biggest question?

The Secretary of State will know that more women rely on the state pension than men. Had he even thought about them before rushing to this change? What happens if the savings from scrapping the triple lock are lower than he expects? Will the Government scale back its social care plan or push taxes up even higher?

The Conservatives introduced the triple lock to give pensioners dignity in retirement after the humiliation of Labour’s pension rise of 75p a week, and we have backed the triple lock ever since. Unlike working-age adults, most pensioners live on fixed incomes and most are unable to work. If the Prime Minister wants to make savings, he should start with working-age welfare; that is what a Conservative Government would do. We have a plan to save £36 billion from the benefits bill and get Britain working again. But the reality is that with the Budget looming, the Prime Minister has no plan for fixing the country’s finances, and this announcement is simply a distraction from the tax rises that are coming.

This is Labour doing what Labour does best—dodging the tough choices, ducking a fight with its welfare-loving Back Benchers, leaving a black hole in its fiscal plans and hammering those who have worked and paid into the system to give more handouts to “Benefits Street”. I am appalled, but frankly I am not surprised.

All we have seen on welfare is a Government missing in action without the backbone to do what is right. They are clearly not on the side of pensioners or hard-working taxpayers. The question is: whose side are they on?

[Pat McFadden]

I listened to the shadow Secretary of State carefully outline her opposition to our plans. The trouble for her is that so many in her party agree with the case for change. The shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), for example, has said that we should “unpick” the triple lock. The shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), has called it “simply not affordable” and described it as a “Ponzi system”. The shadow Justice Secretary, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), actually wrote the 2017 manifesto that pledged to replace it with a double lock.

But my favourite is Lord Gove, who told LBC that if Andy Burnham changed the triple lock he would “declare that I will be campaigning at the next general election exclusively for Stella Creasy in Walthamstow.” I look forward to seeing him at the end of the Victoria line at the next election with a red rosette on his chest!

I could go on, but we would be here all day. Let me just say that I have a file as thick as my morning porridge full of quotes from Tories saying that the triple lock is unsustainable and will have to be changed. They say it in private, they say it before they join the Front Bench and they say it after they leave it, but the shadow Secretary of State did not say it. That leaves her with some questions. How will she fund her opposition to what we have announced? Will it be, as when the Tories were in government before, through faster and faster rises in the state pension age, asking people to work into their 70s before they even get a pension at all? If she will not tell us that, can she tell us how they would fund the future of social care? Should we simply add that to the list of unfunded tax promises that they come out with on an almost-weekly basis? Stamp duty, inheritance tax, national insurance, private schools—all funded from fantasy welfare savings that they never manage to achieve in office.

The right hon. Lady spent her time attacking the system that her Government designed, created and legislated for. She spoke about welfare bills rising. In this Parliament, they are rising at half the rate as in her party’s last Parliament in power. She spoke about pensioner poverty. It rose under the Government in which she served. We look forward to the report of the Pensions Commission next year. I referred to it in my statement. Baroness Casey will also report on how and when the national care system will be rolled out.

In the midst of her attacks against a system that her own party created, the right hon. Lady did ask about welfare reform. We have already cut the gap between the health and standard elements of universal credit, and we have made changes to the Motability scheme. We have stopped people buying British pensions on the cheap, and we will make more changes following the reports of the Milburn and Timms reviews.

The truth is that what we have here is a stark contrast between a party that is prepared to take the decisions needed to offer a new settlement for older people and their families, and one that is in the frankly pathetic position of resisting that change in public while, one after another, agreeing with it in private.