Sunak threatens the pensions triple lock – how can he still say he’s ‘compassionate’?
The triple lock ensuring that pensions rise by the highest of 2.5 per cent, average earnings, or inflation is in danger of being dropped by Rishi Sunak’s new Tory government.
It seems the new prime minister, whose personal wealth is greater than that of the King, is not keen to allow pensioners’ payments to rise in line with the cost of living; inflation currently stands at a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent, due to the failures of previous Tory administrations.
His press secretary has merely claimed that Sunak has a record of being “compassionate for the most vulnerable”. This Writer is not convinced that such a claim holds water.
It seems clear that the pensions triple lock – which was a Tory idea, let’s not forget – was never intended to allow payment increases of the kind being demanded now.
It was a lie intended to dupe senior citizens into thinking the Tories support them and therefore into voting Conservative at elections.
It was dropped during the Covid-19 crisis because wages, having fallen, then rose by eight per cent and Sunak refused to pay. That was a special case, though, because the triple lock did not take account of falls in wages; the rise in fact only returned wages to where they were before.
This is not a special case. The cost of living has increased enormously and richer-than-the-King Sunak is indicating that he wants pensioners to be unable to afford to pay their bills any more.
Oh – and Sunak won’t commit to raising state benefits in line with prices, either.
The decisions on these issues will come on November 17, in Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s winter Budget that is replacing a statement that was due on Monday. Hunt has been given more than two weeks’ grace to find a way to make the situation work for pensioners and those on benefits.
Do you honestly think he’ll bother?
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Sunak is only ‘compassionate’ to his fascist tory bros! Sunak is a typical fascist tory which is why he became our latest fake prime minister! No way must retired women and men be given an increase in their state pensions and likewise all the women and men claiming their rightful state financial assistance must be denied any financial increase!
Remember all our public money is owned and controlled by the fascist tories for their benefit which means giving it all to their greedy fascist bros! Government is a corporate business enterprise wherein profits must be made and constantly increased so that the wealthy tory boys and girls retain their lavish living styles!
‘Compassionate?’ Hahah the fascist tories are having a laugh at us peasants because the fascist tories believe we are easy to be fooled!
And aren’t they right, in the vast majority of cases?
The usual calculation is that people will, in full time work do an annual 1872 hours (36 x 52). The London Living Wage is about to become £11.95 per hour offering a pre tax annual wage of £22,370 . My State pension is £9,000 per annum. I have a works pension of £6000 and yet I am still being taxed……and “living” (more like most and just surviving!) considerably below the living wage.
Yep. I’m furious, even more than I was last year when they suspended it knowing full well that by the time it was to come into force, in April this year, inflation would be well above last September’s (the date used to calculate the increase). To renege on the policy for a second year makes a mockery of them even having this rule in the first place. What is the point if they can just go against it when it doesn’t suit them? How and why anyone believes anything they pledge is beyond me. It does the entire political system a great disservice as many people are now of the belief that all politicians are the same, and do not differentiate between political parties, tarring them all with the same brush.
All this is happening alongside a determined campaign via the media to have us believe that pensions should not be the responsibility of the state, supporting the government agenda to phase the state pension out altogether, by continually raising the qualifying age and reducing its value. All this whilst undertaking a massive campaign to push us towards the private pensions industry.
If they don’t honour the triple lock this time it will be a double whammy as it’ll be a low percentage increase on top of the low one last year. We see what they’re up to.
The triple lock did not return with the Tories.
Thatcher and Major’s Tory government stopped the prior version of triple lock between 1980 and 1997. Labour’s Blair and Brown continued to stop the prior version of triple lock between 1997 and 2010.
The Lib Dems Pension Minister in the coalition government between 2010 to 2015 brought us the triple lock, but the bastard brought about into law immediately from 2010 onwards, a whole raft of pension age rises from Tory and Labour governments from laws passed between 1995 to 2007.
The Lib Dems Pension Minister knew us ladies would early die aged in our 50s and 60s, due to these pension age rises, as Labour government’s own actuaries (the experts in death trends) foresaw 1m long dead before retirement just for a 2 year pension age rise (now hitting men born in the 1960s with pension age 67 up from 65).
The actuaries began the early death research on women aged in our 50s and 60s from 2011 onwards.
Because of the pension age rise, we could not shield by age from the pandemic aged in our 60s, and our death rate tripled from 2020, from the high rise that was highest in 2014 and worse in 2015, with ladies turning 60 those years, with pension age 66.
Labour were the worst bastards, by ending Widows pensions (from our 40s til prior pension age 60) and halving inherited state second pension for widows, to the few mostly men left on SERPs, after Labour’s Callaghan had stopped the state second pension for the working class (us 80 per cent by income) especially where he had direct power, of government and council workers.
www dot over50sparty dot org dot uk
This country is nothing more than an eviscerated shell, hollowed out by the wideboys and carpetbaggers posing as a government. It is utterly disgraceful that those of us who built the wealth this administration has plundered and wasted should be left even further behind. I am embarrassed to be British – we are a banana republic run for the benefit of the Uber wealthy at the cost of our elderly and of future generations. Shameful.