Former Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann has criticised Prime Minister Andy Burnham for pushing ahead with changes to the State Pension Triple Lock before the Pension Commission report into pensions adequacy is completed.
The Prime Minister announced his plans to replace the Triple Lock with a Double Lock at the Labour Party annual conference on Tuesday in a move that shocked many.
Mr Burnham told the conference that the Triple Lock would be replaced with a new mechanism from 2030 to ensure the State Pension at least keeps up with prices.
The annual double lock will mean the State Pension rising each year in line with the highest of prices or 2.5%. He plans to use the billions that the government expects to save to help fund a new national care service.
Baroness Altmann, who has criticised the Triple Lock in the past, says she is not impressed that the Prime Minister has announced changes to the State Pension system before waiting for the Pension Commission report, accusing him of playing “political football” with retirees.
She said: “Why is the Prime Minister not waiting for their recommendations before jumping the gun and announcing changes from 2030 now? Why not ask the two major reviews to look at these proposals and see if they might work, what they will cost, what they will do to pensioner poverty and whether there are better ways of reforming both the triple lock and social care.”
She also made claims that the proposed move to a State Pensions double lock would not considerably contribute to the plans for a new national social care service.
She added: “Keeping the link to both CPI and 2.5% (two elements of the triple lock) while also promising to keep up with average earnings (the third element), how can this save much money? Social care for all, free at the point of use, will cost huge sums, but small changes to the triple lock from 2030 cannot possibly pay for what is being promised - not even close. The numbers just don’t stack up and pensioners can see this, they are not stupid.”
Baroness Altman also raised concerns about how the old State Pension, only one part of which (the Basic State Pension) is protected by the Triple Lock, would be impacted, as illustrations so far have only referred to the new State Pension.
She said: “A full new State Pension will be just over £12,500 a year (241.30 a week) from next April, but the old Basic State Pension is just over £9,600 a year (£184.90 a week). The other parts of the old system, such as SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension) and S2P (State Second Pension) were never covered by the triple lock and only increase by CPI.
“So the oldest pensioners have fallen behind the younger ones – which is surely the wrong way round – while Pension Credit for the poorest is only tied to earnings, not the triple lock either. So, the triple lock does not properly protect the oldest and poorest pensioners. It has been increasingly in need for reform since the new State Pension started in 2016, but the government is not proposing to address this element at all.”