The OECD should keep its nose out of detailed UK policies on pensions, instead of jumping on the anti-Triple Lock bandwagon. Its recommendation that the Triple Lock should be scrapped is based on the false premise that this vital safeguard causes “fiscal uncertainty”.
The reverse is the case, as the Triple Lock is intended to protect older people from the fiscal uncertainty caused by sharp rises in the cost of living or shock events such as oil wars and pandemics. The Triple Lock is not the cause of uncertainty; it is the necessary reaction to it!
The Report fails to point out that the value of our basic state pension is significantly lower than almost all of our economic competitors, close to poverty level for the millions of pensioners who rely on the state pension for their main source of income. If UK pensioners benefitted from the luxury of a state pension set at about two thirds of average earnings like most of the OECD, instead of one third, I would be happy to discuss the ending of the Triple Lock.
OECD bureaucrats in their Paris Chateau offices have no idea what it is like to live on the old state pension of £185 per week, in fact that is probably the cost of their daily lunch blow outs.
Scrapping the Triple Lock would cause an immediate increase in pensioner poverty as energy prices and food prices tend to rise faster than the general rate of inflation and these costs form a bigger part of older people’s budgets than the rest of the population.
The message that the Triple Lock is “unsustainable” is a much-repeated political judgement, but with no factual basis. Society has to decide whether older people should be enabled to live in dignity and warmth in their retirement years and then find the money to make this possible. With our state pension set at such a low level, scrapping the Triple Lock would have life and death consequences for many pensioners and the Lock’s critics need to start being honest about the implications of their devious campaigns.