DON'T MAKE 'SNEAKY' CHANGES RISHI TRIPLE LOCK

Anger over threat to 8.5% rise in state pension

- Sam Lister and Sarah O'Grady 

Rishi plan to save £600m condemned as 'betrayal' of pledge to pensioners

RISHI Sunak was warned he must keep his triple lock promise to 12 million pensioners and drop "sneaky" changes to save cash.

Matching wage growth should mean a guaranteed 8.5% boost for those on the state pension from April next year.

But the Prime Minister is considering stripping bonuses from the salary benchmark to trim the rise to 7.8%, leaving recipients £75 a year worse off than expected.

It could save the Government some £600million, but campaigners  warned it would be a complete "betrayal" of the pensions pledge.

Dennis Reed, director of Silver Voices, said: "Stripping bonuses out of the formula would break the promise on the triple lock.

"At least when it was suspended before, the Government was clear about what it was doing.

"This would be a sneaky, underhand way of changing the lock.

"It would also be a penny-pinching move that takes money off older people at a time when food inflation is still 12.2%.

"Along with the refusal to commit to it in the party manifesto, it will leave older people looking very carefully at how they are going to vote."

Labour peer Lord Foulkes, cochair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Older People, said: "If he does this it will be a complete betrayal. A sneaky ploy from a sneaky Government." And in a letter to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Treasury Minister Darren Jones wrote: "You were elected on a promise to maintain the triple lock.

"After you broke another promise and voted for national insurance increases, pensioners will understandably be deeply concerned about any changes and anxious their incomes may be under threat."