‘Do I think in 10, 20, 30 years’ time we will still have a triple lock? I cannot see in all honesty how we can,’ says David Gauke

The new welfare and pensions secretary believes the government will have to reform the triple lock on pensions within his lifetime, despite concerns that it could lose votes for the Conservatives.

Pensions triple lock: what you need to know Read more

David Gauke said the mechanism, under which recipients receive an annual increase of whichever is the highest among rises in average earnings, rises in inflation, or 2.5%, will have to end. “If you look at what the triple lock does, it has a ratchet effect, because pensions go up by the higher of inflation or earnings, and in some years it will be one, in some years it will be the other,” he told journalists in Westminster.



“But over a period of time, it will mean that a greater and greater share of GDP goes to paying the state pension, even without any increases in pensioner numbers, because that’s just the way it works. Do I think that in 10, 20, 30 years’ time we will still have a triple lock? I cannot see in all honesty how we can.”

Gauke said the triple lock would remain until 2020, but would then be “reflected” on. The Conservative manifesto pledged to reduce it to a double lock by removing the minimum 2.5% rise, a pledge seized on by opposition parties as a betrayal of pensioners.

Labour claimed that the plan to scrap it was part of an attack on elderly people. Tory MPs said that, when coupled with the so-called “dementia tax”, it proved to be toxic to core Conservative voters.

Asked if the Tories could in two years’ time introduce manifesto pledges that were left out of the Queen’s speech, including abolishing the triple lock, Gauke said: “We will reflect on those measures and we haven’t ruled anything out.”

Gauke, who has been in his cabinet post for 10 days, said the benefits freeze would remain despite post-general election calls for an end to the austerity era. At a lobby lunch with reporters, he acknowledged that food banks were now “much more widely used”, but claimed that one of the reasons for this was heightened public awareness.



“It is sometimes scoffed at, but the fact is there is much greater awareness of food banks than was the case previously. It’s become much more widely used. If we want to reduce poverty, if we want to reduce the need for people to use food banks, it’s that we have got to have a strong economy that creates jobs.”

Gauke appeared to agree with critics of the Tory election campaign that the chancellor, Philip Hammond, should have been used more to attack Labour’s spending plans. “Obviously, Philip was chancellor. He would have been well placed to do that. So, yes, I think with the benefit of hindsight we clearly needed to make that argument more than we did. We needed to make more of the economic case,” he said.

