Pensions Triple Lock

Rosie Wrighting Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

It is important to appreciate that in the UK we have a dual system of a state pension and additional second pensions. We have a very healthy second pension system—trillions of pounds of investment—and it is important to look at pensioner incomes taking both those things into account. By that measure, we have a healthy pension system. Under the plans that we have announced today, the state pension will continue to rise each and every year.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

The British public deserve politicians who will be honest with them about what is necessary in order to rewrite the social contract to make it work. Does the Secretary of State therefore share my genuine disappointment that the Conservatives chose to come here today and play politics rather than get behind our plan when so many of them say in private that they know it is in the interests of the British people?

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is right. She knows that many MPs on the Conservative Benches agree with our position. However, their Front-Bench colleagues have chosen to adopt a different position, which is to talk about reducing the Department’s budget and then, when we make a decision to make it sustainable for the future, to run for the hills. That is what they have done today—everyone will have seen it—and it undermines everything else they say about savings in the DWP budget.