Pensions Triple Lock

Neil Duncan-Jordan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The state pension will continue to rise for Scottish pensioners in each and every year. Furthermore, extra funds will be allocated to the Scottish Government as a result of the social care changes that are part of this package. He is also right to point out that the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the First Minister was wrong to claim what he claimed over the state pension. There is another thing on top of that, which is the enormous complacency in suggesting that the Scottish care system cannot be improved. It can be improved. There are almost 10,000 Scots waiting for social care assessments, and my hon. Friend knows that that is true for his constituents and the many other constituents who are represented here today.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

We should be clear that setting future indexation to a proportion of average earnings means that, over time, the state pension will be lower than under the current system. Given that future generations will increasingly rely on the state pension, it seems like we are going in the wrong direction, but the real concern is that this policy is asking pensioners to pay for the care of other pensioners. Can I ask the Secretary of State why we are not sharing the cost of a new national care service among us all?

[Pat McFadden]

On the relationship to average earnings, in future years the gains from almost 20 years of the triple lock by the time we get to April 2030 will be locked in. The difference will be that, instead of outpacing average earnings as the current system does, the state pension will be linked to the level of average earnings that it reaches in April 2030.

On my hon. Friend’s second point, this is a new settlement which guarantees a rising state pension every year but, over time, also releases funds for one of the biggest issues facing the country. I think the Prime Minister deserves credit for facing up to this issue. His criticism of politics, which is merited, is that difficult long-term issues have too often been ducked, which has left them to fester unresolved. In putting forward this new settlement, he is ensuring not only security for pensioners’ incomes but a means of tackling this issue.