Senior Conservative says Burnham may not be able to afford triple lock unless he gets growth

Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart has said the triple lock may become unaffordable within this parliament.

Speaking on GB News he said: “In my constituency, I have a lot of voters who are on the brink of retirement or who are retired, and they largely do want to keep the triple lock, and I understand why. It’s because they worked hard all of their lives and they don’t want to feel that they’re going to get poorer during retirement when they can’t work.

“They can’t go out and earn more money to supplement their income, as perhaps somebody who is younger could do.

“But look, I’m a fiscal Conservative and I want to see the books balanced. I think that the best way of making the triple lock affordable is to get growth; that the reason the triple lock has become unaffordable is because we’ve had low growth and high inflation, and that really is punishing.

“That’s why the Conservative Party under Kemi has started to set out good, comprehensive, traditionally Conservative plans for growth. We are going to get the cost of electricity and energy down. We’re going to get rid of a whole load of nonsense business regulation.

“We’re going to cut public spending so that we can get the deficit down, and we can reduce people’s taxes and we can get good old-fashioned growth. And if we do that, then I believe that the triple lock will become affordable.

“If you go back to 1906 when Lloyd George was first proposing a retirement age, he was proposing an age of 70 years in 1906 and so, I think we have to be realistic about what’s appropriate as medical technology and people’s lifestyles change. That’s got to be part of the conversation.

“But what you can’t have is a situation in which you have the triple lock and a sort of stagflation, or indeed something which may become worse than that over the course of this parliament.

“And that’s why, when I look at the Labour government’s figures, unless something radical changes under Andy Burnham, it may be that they really can’t afford the triple lock by the end of the Parliament.

“Because we’re entering this kind of classic Labour doom spiral, where high taxes are driving down growth, inflation is high, and the country is getting poorer.

“I think that we need to have an honest conversation about the future of old age.”