Pensions Triple Lock

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

Based on the Government’s own figures, pensioners in Scotland will be £4 billion worse off by 2050. [Interruption.] Those are the Government’s own figures. That is £2,000 for every pensioner in Scotland in the context of what has already been referred to as one of the worst state pensions in Europe.

We already have free personal care in Scotland, and suspicions abound that Scottish pensioners are now being asked to fix a failed English social care system. Will the Secretary of State give me a cast-iron assurance that for every pound spent on fixing that English social care failure, there will be a Barnett consequential for Scotland so that we can restore that money to Scottish pensioners?

[Pat McFadden]

Let me say first that Scottish pensioners will see a rising state pension every year. The IFS has said that the First Minister was wrong to claim that was not the case.

I turn to the hon. Member’s complacency. It is hugely complacent to suggest that somehow the social care system in Scotland is not in need of improvement. Let me remind him that almost 10,000 Scots are waiting for social care assessments or packages. It is Scotland’s place in the UK that means that the Scottish Government secured a record financial settlement—what have they done with the money? It is Scotland’s place in the UK that means there will be extra funding for social care in Scotland as a result of the changes we have announced.