Saturday, January 18, 2025
Tories in disarray as Badenoch wings it on pensions
The paper says that the Conservative leader suggested she could back a major policy shift away from the universal promise introduced by the Liberal Democrats when in coalition with her party that the state pension will rise each year by whichever is highest out of 2.5%, inflation, or earnings:
When asked during an LBC phone-in whether she would look at the triple lock, Badenoch said: “We’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”
However, she criticised the Labour government’s move to means-test the winter fuel payment, saying it meant “people who are actually on the breadline actually have had their winter fuel payment taken away”.
Ros Altmann, a non-affiliated peer who previously sat as a Conservative pensions minister, told Sky News on Friday that Badenoch needed to reconsider her comments. “What we urgently need is clarification of what on earth she means,” Altmann said. “What does she mean by means testing the triple lock?”
She added: “The problem we have in going down the route implied – and I don’t think she probably means it – is that every pensioner would start getting a different state pension again. Whereas the whole point of state pension reforms is that there should be a basic flat rate minimum state pension and then encourage people to top it up with private pensions.
“As soon as you introduce means testing to the state pension system, you disincentivise from bothering to save in their private pension.”
One does get the impression that Badenoch is making this sort of thing up as she goes along, which makes her remarks even more damaging for the Tories. There is certainly a need to reform the state pension system so that every pensioner gets a single payment comparable to the minimum wage, but this is not the way to do it.
As one paper pointed out, what makes it worse is that by the time of the next General Election it is possible that about a third of those pensioners who voted Tory last year may no longer be with us, while a large proportion of more conservative, younger voters are being sucked into voting Reform. Badenoch cannot afford to alienate pensioners.
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Is the party going to do something to get these young conservatives who are turning to Reform to vote for us? ie a consistant rise in minimum wage,Cheap social housing that ,say,after 10 years they can buy?
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