Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak should blame Brexit for ditching the pensions triple lock

Car workers in Sunderland are doing just fine. Construction workers still have jobs. And the food is still getting to the supermarkets, even if there are some occasional disruptions to supply. 

Not many of the dire warnings about the consequences of leaving the European Union have actually come to pass. There is, however, one group that looks likely to be hit, even if no one quite predicted it. The pensioners. It looks certain to cost them the ‘triple lock’ on their pensions: although since many of them voted for Brexit, they can hardly complain.

The government is tying itself up in knots on how to wriggle out of the ‘triple lock’

The government is tying itself up in knots on how to wriggle out of the ‘triple lock’. A long-standing manifesto commitment, it mandates that the state pension goes up by 2.5 per cent a year, or the rate of inflation, or the rate of average earnings, depending on which is the highest. 

When it was dreamt up, back in the far distant days of David Cameron and George Osborne, promising to raise pensions by more than 2.5

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