Alex Burghart reaffirms Conservative support for state pension triple lock

Conservative deputy leader Alex Burghart reaffirmed the party’s support for the state pension triple lock in BBC local-radio interviews reported on Thursday, 1 October. His comments sharpened the party’s response to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s plan to change how pensions rise from April 2030, but did not announce a new Conservative policy.

Burghart called pensioners a ‘special case’, arguing that people who have stopped working cannot increase their income and have a right to be looked after properly. He said difficult decisions about welfare should instead focus on benefits for working-age people. Those are his arguments for the party’s position, rather than a finding about every person receiving a pension.

What Burghart said about pensioners and benefits

Speaking to BBC Radio Berkshire, Burghart said there should be one approach to pensioners and another to working-age adults. Pensioners had reached the end of their working lives, he argued, and there was ‘nothing they can do to improve their circumstances’. He said he thought most people would understand the distinction.

Asked about adults with disabilities who cannot work, Burghart said his argument applied to people who can work and should be in work. That qualification matters because his broader comments about working-age benefits do not describe every claimant’s circumstances. The BBC reported that he also advocated tighter conditions for young people seeking unemployment benefits.

How the triple lock works and what Burnham proposes

Under the existing triple lock, the basic and new State Pension rise each year by the highest of average earnings growth, consumer price inflation or 2.5%. The Department for Work and Pensions says the government is committed to keeping that formula throughout the current Parliament. The dispute concerns the proposed arrangement after that period, rather than an immediate change to pension payments.

From April 2030, the government plans to raise the State Pension by at least inflation or 2.5% each year, with any further increase needed to maintain its value relative to earnings over time. That would replace the existing annual comparison with earnings growth. Burnham has said the change would help fund a National Care Service; the DWP describes the adjusted formula and models its potential long-term effects.

The DWP estimates savings relative to continuing the present triple lock of £15 billion in 2039–40 and £50 billion in 2049–50, in nominal terms. Those are modelled comparisons, not amounts already saved. Its analysis depends on assumptions about factors including earnings, inflation and the number of pensioners, and says uncertainty increases further into the projection period.

The same analysis projects a decline in relative pensioner poverty after housing costs under the adjusted mechanism. The department explicitly describes those figures as conditional projections, not predictions of future poverty rates. Neither the savings estimates nor the poverty projections establish what any individual pensioner will receive in 2030 or later.

What changed since the party chair’s statement

Burghart’s intervention follows Conservative Party chair Kevin Hollinrake’s statement on 30 September that retaining the triple lock was the party’s current plan. As NewsJaws reported in its earlier account of the party chair’s position, Hollinrake left the next manifesto open: he said it had not yet been written, although he assumed the policy would appear in it.

Hollinrake told BBC Breakfast that Conservatives wanted to recognise the contribution of people who had paid into the system and provide a decent standard of earnings in retirement. He said the party did not think the pension part of the welfare system was the right place to make savings. Burghart’s latest comments reinforce that position and give a fuller explanation of how he distinguishes pensioners from working-age claimants.

The two senior Conservatives have therefore stated a consistent present position while leaving a formal election commitment for a future manifesto. For pensioners, the immediate rule remains the existing triple lock during this Parliament, according to the DWP. The unresolved policy question is whether the Conservatives will carry their current pledge into an election manifesto and what form the government’s planned 2030 change will ultimately take.