Burnham Will Legislate to End the Triple Lock This Parliament
The government will pass legislation scrapping the state pension triple lock during this parliament, even though the guarantee itself remains in place until 2030. Guidance published alongside the Prime Minister’s conference speech shows MPs will be required to vote on the change before the election. In future the earnings element will be adjusted to avoid very large increases in years when wages spike.
The timing is the whole of it. Keeping the guarantee until 2030 honours the manifesto; legislating now puts the change on the statute book before anyone has voted on it, and obliges every party to say whether it would keep Labour’s version or repeal it. That converts an announcement into a dividing line, and forces the Conservatives and Reform — both of whom spent this week promising to protect the lock — to show how a reversal would be paid for. It also means a Commons vote in a parliament that has already seen a welfare rebellion. The mechanism smooths rather than severs: the pension still rises by prices or 2.5%, and the earnings link returns only if its value falls behind. The earnings element becomes a floor instead: officials put it at no less than 30% of average earnings, and the saving at about £15bn a year by the end of the 2030s and £50bn by 2050 — but the Resolution Foundation’s Ruth Curtice has shown how conditional that is: it “saves most in a volatile world, and so saves nothing in the 90s or 00s, and £24bn in the 10s”. Since the care offer is costed against it, that range matters. Watch when the bill is introduced.