2017 manifesto
‘The triple lock has worked,’ Theresa May’s election manifesto read in 2017. ‘It is now time to set pensions on an even course. So we will keep our promise to maintain the triple lock until 2020, and when it expires we will introduce a new double lock, meaning that pensions will rise in line with the earnings that pay for them, or in line with inflation – whichever is highest.’
Although the Conservatives went into the general election campaign set for a landslide, their lead over Labour bled away and they ended up eight seats short of a majority. They abandoned plans to reform the triple lock as part of their confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP, keeping them in office and, just barely, in power.
Andrew Griffith
The new shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith recommended revising the triple lock in 2021 when a post-Covid wage rebound meant the state pension was set to increase by almost 9 per cent. Griffith wrote: ‘Using this statistical anomaly of a near double-digit rate of wage growth to increase pensions would, I believe, be wrong.’ He also said the triple lock was an ‘unfair additional tax burden’ for working-age people.
Today, Griffith said that he only called for the lock to be temporarily changed.
Nick Timothy
Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy was Theresa May’s joint chief of staff until the disastrous 2017 election. He questioned the need for the triple lock in 2015, saying that scrapping it was the ‘obvious alternative’ to welfare cuts.
Iain Duncan Smith
Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said in 2016 that the triple lock had achieved its goal and argued that it should be scrapped instead of making more welfare cuts, to ‘take the pressure off working age people’.
On Tuesday, however, he said: ‘I think you can shave money off the triple lock to a degree… [the] real focus should be on making sure people go back to work and making sure that what we have is a welfare system which is far cheaper.’
Jeremy Hunt
Brought into the Treasury to placate the bond markets and restore fiscal credibility after Liz Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng, Jeremy Hunt dumped almost everything that was left of the mini-Budget, including plans to cut the basic rate of income tax. But he still managed to give pensioners their biggest-ever triple lock increases – an inflation-matching 10.1 per cent increase in April 2023 and an earnings-matching 8.5 per cent increase the next year – and put a ‘triple lock plus’ in the Tories’ 2024 manifesto. Now he’s a backbencher and less concerned with buying pensioners’ votes, Hunt has gone further than he dared as chancellor, saying the triple lock is ‘an anchor drag on economic growth’ and regretting that he didn’t ‘bite the bullet’, adding that funding increases as we’re racking up so much debt is ‘not just unaffordable but actually immoral’.
Tom Tugendhat
Shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat argued against the triple lock as recently as November when in the Commons he said: ‘the triple lock is simply not affordable’. He added: ‘we do not have enough young people for an ageing population. That means, I am afraid, that we do need to look at the triple lock.’ Tugendhat recently said, however, that he fully supports Badenoch’s policies.
Jack Rankin
Even Kemi’s own PPS, Jack Rankin, said at last year’s Conservative party conference that the ‘triple lock situation is not sustainable long term.’ He also neatly summed up the Tory predicament: ‘We can’t cut pensions because all of our voters are over the age of 70… but if we don’t cut pensions we won’t have any voters under the age of 70.’ For context, in the 2024 election, 46 per cent of over-70s voted Conservative.
Edward Leigh
Other Tory backbenchers have also come out against the triple lock. Edward Leigh, the longest-serving Tory MP, said in a Commons debate on pensioner poverty in December: ‘We all know that the triple lock is unsustainable. We cannot have a situation where people of my generation are consuming an ever greater proportion of national wealth through the state pension.’
Desmond Swayne
In April, the MP for New Forest West Desmond Swayne wrote: ‘we simply cannot afford to carry on with the generosity of the triple lock.’ He argues, like Iain Duncan Smith did a decade ago: ‘at which point the triple lock can, having secured its aim, be disapplied.’
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