Commenting on the agreement to make no further changes to the Triple Lock, Chris Noon from Hymans Robertson commented: “We are pleased that the Conservative manifesto pledge to review the Triple Lock in 2020 has been dropped. Moving to a “double lock” would have been the equivalent of a £250 a year reduction in State Pension, impacting those on low and middle incomes the hardest. In fact the Government’s own figures show that the State Pension changes introduced in April 2016 actually reduced the long-term costs of the State Pension by £8bn a year, a figure which already includes the cost of the Triple Lock.”
Malcolm McLean, Senior Consultant, at Barnett Waddingham, said; “It doesn’t come as any great surprise that the state pension triple lock and winter fuel payment are to be retained, as the DUP’s opposition to these policy changes was well known.
“The retention of the triple lock, for the full duration of another parliament, will in itself not be costly when compared to the alternative of a double-lock without the 2.5% minimum. If the triple lock were to continue over the longer term, however, its retention would almost certainly be unsustainable. Some estimates suggest that by 2060 the extra cost might be as high as a whopping £30 billion. You cannot help feeling at some point, the nettle will have to be grasped by a political party with the nerve, and the majority, to do so.
“The extra cost of continuing the winter fuel payment, as a universal benefit, is not clear. The conservative manifesto never specified how a means-testing arrangement would work and/or what thresholds would apply.
“Now, the only difference between the Conservative and Labour plans for pensions relate to compensation for the WASPI women and for the uprating of the state pension for pensioners overseas.”
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