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Tom Harwood presents a pensions policy that is both money saving and popular: promise that Pensions will NEVER go down in cash terms; Pensions will NEVER go down in real terms; Pensions will RISE every year; and 4. Pensions will GO UP in line with CPI inflation
This week Rachel Reeves rolled the pitch of doom, primed the pump of pain and buttered the parsnips of despair.
Despite assuring my colleague Christopher Hope that we shouldn’t cancel our turkey order this Christmas, she made it clear that “we will all have to contribute” to fund her spending spree. In her last budget the Chancellor raised taxes by £40bn and spending by £70bn a year.
By the end of this parliament, spending on working age disability benefits is due to soar by £14bn, the amount being spent on the NHS will rise by £29bn, and the state pension is due to cost the taxpayer £15.5bn more due to triple lock commitments.
Both the Conservatives and Reform have set out how they would save billions from Britain’s benefits bloat, particularly limiting handouts for milder mental health afflictions and returning to in-person assessments.
Sadly the government has given up on substantial welfare savings, with the Timms Review into personal independence payments last week admitting in its terms of reference it will “operate within the OBR’s projections for future PIP expenditure”. That’s the review established to save money now apparently committing to the very £14bn bloat it was established to limit.
There is, however, one area where all parties have dipped a toe into the treacherous waters of saving money. Conservative Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has said the pensions triple lock is unsustainable in the long term. Pensions minister Torsten Bell has argued for outright triple lock abolition. And at the start of this week we saw reports that Reform is toying with the idea of triple lock refinement too.
Four lock are better than three
So in the interests of cross party unity, national harmony and indeed selfless service to my country – let me present a money saving AND popular policy for all the parties to adopt, no credit needed: A state pension quadruple lock.
Stay with me here, but let’s first acknowledge that all pensioners rightly want to ensure that their pensions are safe and will keep up with the cost of living.
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This is clearly the electoral magic behind the current triple lock. A sense of security. I am supremely confident that if the public were to be polled on the particulars of what the triple lock actually is, very few would be able to accurately name every measure: that the state pension will rise by average earnings growth measured from May to July, September’s number for CPI inflation, or 2.5 per cent – whichever is highest.
The way to reform the unsustainable triple lock is with a safe alternative that ensures pensioners are no worse off: uprating it in-line with CPI inflation
When people talk about the triple lock, or even deign to mention its long-term unsustainability, the concern from anxious pensioners is they would see their income cut. That’s why the most pertinent political attack lines on this subject use phrases like “taking money away” or “cutting your pension”. Therefore the way to reform the unsustainable triple lock is with a safe alternative that ensures pensioners are no worse off.
Let me present to you, esteemed reader, my modest proposal for a quadruple lock. This innovation not only sounds safer than a triple lock (because it adds an extra lock), it genuinely keeps pensions safer too – because my proposal makes them more financially sustainable in the long run.
The quadruple lock ensures four very distinct promises: 1. Pensions will NEVER go down in cash terms; 2. Pensions will NEVER go down in real terms; 3. Pensions will RISE every year; and 4. Pensions will GO UP in line with CPI inflation.
Pensioners want the security of knowing their pensions will rise. This system guarantees that they will. And four locks are indeed more comforting than three.
I should know, I’ve stress-tested this against several focus groups of imaginary pensioners.
Now, a cynical reader may intuit that these four locks are all very similar. A very cynical reader might even decry the plan as a watering down of the triple lock system. But to that I would say count the measures. There are four of them now.
Political parties, I’ll await your call. Or possibly a peerage.
Tom Harwood is deputy political editor at GB News
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