The UK’s pension triple lock has done its job and needs to be retired

By Jonquil Lowe, Visiting Academic, The Open University

The UK’s pension triple lock has only been in place for 15 years. But it’s done the job it was brought in to do, and now it should be scrapped.

So the prime minister is right to want to change it. Because while it’s been widely treated as politically untouchable, the triple lock is very expensive.

That’s not to say it was unnecessary.

At the time that it was introduced in 2011 (by the Conservative-led coalition) to address the problem of pensioner poverty, the state pension was equivalent to only a sixth…

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