Inside the secret plot to kill the state pension triple lock

Momentum is growing among Labour MPs secretly plotting a push for the triple lock to be scrapped in order to boost support for younger generations.

Pressure is mounting from outside Whitehall to rethink the policy, with former prime minister Tony Blair warning it is “unaffordable long term”, and former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt calling for the “immoral” policy to be scrapped.

Despite the Labour Government stating it will maintain the triple lock in its manifesto, MPs have told The i Paper of a groundswell of private discussions among colleagues about how to phase it out – while causing minimal electoral damage.

The generous uprating system was introduced in 2010 to reduce poverty in older generations, and guarantees that the state pension increases each year with either inflation, wage increases or 2.5 per cent – whichever is highest.

High levels of inflation have seen costs balloon to around £146bn a year, which is equivalent to 5 per cent of GDP and more than double the amount spent on defence.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the triple lock has cost around three times more than initial expectations and will add around 1.6 per cent of GDP to the state pension bill over the next 50 years, accounting for about half of the projected overall rise in pension spending.

While there have long been murmurings from within Labour that the triple lock is unaffordable and unsustainable, many believe scrapping it would be politically toxic among older voters.

But now, growing numbers of MPs are calling for the party to position itself as a voice for younger generations, who have suffered several crises from the 2008 financial crash through to the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘This should be framed towards young people’

Labour backbencher Graeme Downie said older people should “continue to be supported”, but that his party must be “unashamed about saying we are about the next generation”.

He told The i Paper: “The triple lock costs tens of billions of pounds more than it was expected to cost, yet we still have pensioners living in poverty, which tells you that the current system isn’t working, and it’s costing too much money.

“Why not come up with a way that both supports pensioners in poverty, but also uses that money more effectively to shift to things like defence spending, and also to support the next generation as well?”

“Nothing should be off the table, frankly, for the kind of generational shift that we need to see,” he added.

Downie said that while he may be one of the only Labour MPs speaking out, dozens more agree with him privately. After calling for triple lock reform in The House – Parliament’s magazine – in April, he said “at least 20 colleagues” said they agreed with him.

The MP for Dunfermline and Dollar added that if abolishing the policy is framed as a way of supporting younger generations, there would be “a huge amount of support” in the parliamentary Labour Party.

Even pensions minister Torsten Bell – who has publicly committed to maintaining the triple lock for the rest of this Parliament – described the triple lock as “silly” while in opposition.

Some MPs are hopeful a Labour leadership contest could spark a more prominent debate about the future of the triple lock.

However, leadership hopeful and former health secretary Wes Streeting has previously defended the policy as “guaranteed” for pensioners. His potential rival Andy Burnham – who is bidding to return to Westminster in this month’s by-election – has not publicly broken with the party’s stance on keeping the policy during the current Parliament.

MPs starting to go public

Despite the sizeable hurdles in the way of MPs campaigning for the end of the triple lock, their cause was bolstered this week as former Cabinet minister Liam Byrne became the most prominent serving Labour MP to publicly admit it should be scrapped.

Byrne, who famously left a note for his successor to say there was “no money” left when his party lost power in 2010, argued for “a gradual move from the triple lock’s ratchet effect toward a more stable uprating mechanism” in an essay for centre-right think-tank Bright Blue.

Labour’s former deputy leader Harriet Harman suggested in April that the Government should look at means testing the state pension triple lock in order to raise more money for defence.

Labour Growth Group (LGG), a centrist group of MPs focused on economic growth which was formed after Labour’s landslide victory, said the triple lock “sits in a fiscal space” that MPs feel could be better used to support working-age people.

Mark McVitie, the outgoing director of the group, said there is a “subset of MPs focused on intergenerational fairness”, who feel that the “people who worked hard deserve security, and the people working now are getting clobbered on energy, on rent, on everything”.

He told The i Paper there must be a “shared project to fix that” by demonstrating how to “bring down the structural cost base across the economy”, rather than a move to abolish the triple lock as a “stand-alone measure”.

“Try to do it without those major accompanying reforms and it fails, politically and morally,” McVitie added.

Labour MP Chris Curtis, who recently quit as LGG’s chair, said last November that the triple lock “cannot last forever” as a “mathematical fact”.

‘We need to future-proof the system’

Blair said the generosity of the triple lock was “not affordable” in the long term, while the Resolution Foundation – where Bell previously worked as chief executive – has suggested ministers “call time” on the system.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has also published extensively on the need to “reconsider the triple lock”, proposing other options for uprating pensioners’ pay in a more stable way.

Heidi Karjalainen, a senior economist at the IFS, said the Government’s Pensions Commission, launched in 2025, is trying to build consensus on the future of the state pension.

She said: “What we really need is to take the politics out of these choices, to the extent that it’s possible, and we want to think about the pension system as a whole, and then try to future-proof it.”

Jeremy Hunt, a high-profile Tory, recently told the BBC that the triple lock is “not just unaffordable but actually immoral” as it is being partly funded by debt on younger generations.

Several other former Conservative ministers have criticised the policy for being geared towards ageing demographics, including shadow Chancellor Mel Stride and MP and former Cabinet minister Tom Tugendhat.

But former pensions minister Steve Webb said that although ministers would “love to” ditch it to free up extra money, it is politically risky.

“There are perfectly good fairness arguments, and we should do more for young people,” he said. “But from a crude electoral perspective, there aren’t many votes in taking money away from pensions and spending on young people.”

Webb added that there is a “good reason for keeping it going” with three-quarters of workers now unable to look forward to a “moderate retirement”, according to a new report by Pensions UK.

“Arguably, now is not the time to ease off on the state pension when private pension saving is so low,” he said.