Why the pensions triple lock is unfair - and unaffordable

Just days after telling a parliamentary committee that the pensions triple lock was being "kept under review", the chancellor Jeremy Hunt locked it into the Tory manifesto.

- JAMES MOORE

In so doing, he has landed our public services – which are already facing draconian cuts – with a multibillion-pound headache.

As someone much closer to retirement than I am to the start of my career, the triple lock could (in theory) be of benefit to me. But if politicians aren’t willing to be honest about the painful fiscal realities Britain faces, it falls to the rest of us to step up and say it: this pensions policy is unfair – and unaffordable.

So, what is it? Well, the triple lock increases the state pension based on the rise in average earnings, inflation, or 2.5 per cent, whichever is highest. It was ushered in under the ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition in 2010, at which time it represented an unusual show of generosity, given the austerity measures the government was blowing across the public services and most other state benefits.

And it’s not that it hasn’t achieved anything: per the Resolution Foundation’s 2019 Generation of Poverty report, we know that the policy did successfully reduce the relative poverty rate among those over 70 to a record low. But it came at a high price to the public purse.