It will be up to us to protect pensioners and the triple lock

By Claudia Webbe MP 

The vast gap between Britain’s pensions and those of other comparable nations shows that low pensions are a political choice, not an economic necessity — and now the Tories are attacking what remains, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

THE “triple lock” on pensions is all that is left after 12 years of a disastrous Conservative government — and even that is now under threat. In a society where millions are routinely and knowingly condemned to poverty, hunger and misery by Conservative policies, the hope of some stability in retirement was one of the few lights at the end of a very long and very dimly lit tunnel.

The government, with an obliging mainstream media and numerous think tanks, has exerted significant energies into warning us that with annual Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation running at 10.1 per cent, a 40-year high, adhering to the triple lock would prove hugely expensive.

Economists have warned that further figures to be released this week will show that inflation accelerated to 10.8 per cent in October. Those who are briefing the media have argued that an estimated £5 billion more, based on current inflation estimates, in the next tax year would be required than if the average earnings figure were used instead.

All of this has left pensioners feeling extremely anxious. Like austerity, removing the triple lock is simply class war that has no economic legitimacy in a just and moral society.

For those not familiar with the term, the pensions triple lock is a mechanism matching pension increases to whichever is the greater out of annual inflation, average wages or 2.5 per cent — it is a vital means of maintaining some kind of standard of living for those in retirement.

The government is said to be considering either doing away with the triple lock completely or reducing it to a “double lock.”

Given the soaring rate of inflation, it’s almost certain that the inflation link would be the “lock” to be removed, putting pensioners at the mercy of the rampant greed of companies exploiting international issues as an excuse to raise prices and fatten profits.

Abandoning the triple lock would almost certainly mean a loss of around £12,000 a year for pensioners over the course of their retirement.

And it’s not as if these cuts are being made to a generous base. British pensions are already woefully inadequate to meet the needs of our pensioners.

According to a recent report by the Centre for Ageing Better, in the 12 months up to March this year, another 200,000 pensioners fell into poverty.

The threat to the triple lock comes against a backdrop in which Britain already has one of the worst pension provisions for its older people out of any major EU country.

A 2022 government report pointed out that even once state and private pensions were aggregated, Britain had lower than average pension earnings, compared to previous income, than the average EU country. The EU average state pension is 63 per cent of working earnings — and almost 60 per cent among wider OECD nations.

In Britain it is barely a quarter. After decades of working-age hardship, with real-terms earnings drastically reduced under the Tories, even with the triple lock, British pensions are a woefully inadequate pittance.

At the same time, governments have pushed pensions later and later — particularly for the “Waspi women” born in the 1950s, many of whom have been forced into real hardship and chaos, with the retirement at 60 that they were promised and planned for delayed until 66.

These inequalities are not just unfair, they are lethal — there is now a huge difference in life expectancy of around a decade between the better off and those struggling. If we look at healthy life expectancy, it’s double — just under 20 years difference between the poor and the well-off. So, as well as taking years off lives, inequality is robbing people of decades of health.

The vast gap between Britain’s pensions and those of other comparable nations shows that low pensions here — like every other decision damaging the lives of millions — are a political choice, not an economic necessity.

In fact, it’s even worse than that: it’s purely ideological and it’s actually counterproductive in economic terms, perpetuating a situation that is then used as an excuse for more cuts and greater inequality.

It is an ideological attack that enables the richest to go untaxed whilst those who have worked the hardest over the longest period of time, and who are the most vulnerable, become increasingly impoverished.

It is important to understand from the outset what the government’s underlying motive is for suspending the triple lock for what would now be, if implemented, three years in a row.

It is yet another broken manifesto pledge, marketed and amplified by a compliant media as a “necessary evil” to pull us through a cost-of-living crisis. In reality, the only evil is the betrayal of the British public at every turn.

It can only be described as cruelty and malice that this government has hunted for ways in which workers and communities should pay for the crisis, instead of getting the billionaires and millionaires who have flourished since the pandemic to pay up.

Removing the triple lock will destroy the value of the state pension, plunging those in old age into poverty. It is obscene to be robing them whilst enriching the wealthiest.

As well as causing immeasurable hardship, all these cuts actually damage our economy. It’s a well-known economic principle that each pound of public spending sees a much bigger return in economic activity — around £1.70 for each pound spent — fuelling economic growth. Each pound cut does the reverse, exacerbating economic decline.

Of course, each pound put into the pocket of people on low incomes goes immediately back into the economy because they are going to spend it, while a pound paid into the coffers of corporations and the wealthy is more likely to end up in an offshore bank account.

Providing a better standard of living for the millions struggling in Britain would be sound economic sense, growing our economy and creating a virtuous circle of self-perpetuating prosperity that lifts everyone.

Income tax rises on the wages of the super-rich, returning corporate taxes to 25 per cent, taxing capital gains and dividend wealth equitably, extending stamp duty on financial transactions to cover more of our deeply risky and over-financialised economy, tackling tax avoidance and evasion, implementing a wealth tax and reviewing tax reliefs and subsidies that only benefit the rich, are just some of the measures the government can take to stave off a winter of discontent when producing its Autumn Statement.

The real challenge for the government is to show the political will to make the changes needed to put our country on a genuinely sound economic and ecological footing by redistributing wealth to where it does the most good, helping ordinary people from the youngest to the oldest to enjoy a decent quality of life — and lifting the shame of poverty in a nation that is supposedly one of the world’s richest, but in reality has become a poor country with a small number of very wealthy people.

Those changes are not complicated. They are not difficult choices to make — as UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty Philip Alston pointed out, when he came to Britain four years ago, it would be easy and inexpensive to fix the fundamental injustices found. But tragically, that political will is almost entirely absent.

Maintaining the pensions triple lock in this week’s Autumn Statement is essential, but it’s barely even a starting point in what this country needs — and what the government could easily do, if only it chose to.

In the absence of political leadership, it will be up to those of us on the left to take the lead — to keep hammering home the arguments, and organising both resistance and an effective media and communications agenda to ensure that the Establishment’s plan to drown out the existence of alternatives is not allowed to succeed.

Claudia Webbe MP is the member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe