‘We need to talk about the triple lock’

We are living through the most significant geopolitical realignment since the end of the Second World War. The rules-based international order my generation took for granted is fracturing and the consequences will be even more stark than the end of the Cold War, something I saw first-hand living in Berlin in 1989. 

The young people, who will fight any future war, be that in cyberspace, at sea, on land or in the air, and who will suffer most, cannot also be asked to pay for the defence of our nation alone. 

Britain must decide, urgently and honestly, what our role should be and how we will pay to protect ourselves and our allies. But we must ensure we acknowledge the scale of the shift needed and that we take a whole of society approach.   

READ MORE: ‘Starmer and Reeves must break with Treasury orthodoxy to fund Britain’s security’

I represent a constituency that sits on the frontline of a real and active conflict with Russia. In the North Sea and the North Atlantic, the subsea cables that carry our energy, internet, our financial systems and our communications are as vulnerable as any military target.  

I have spoken with allies in the Baltic states who know well that the threat from Putin’s Russia is both existential and immediate. They are not scaremongering. They are telling us, with a clarity born of lived experience, that the threat to our freedom is real. We should listen. 

That is why increasing defence spending is not optional. It is a necessity. The threat will not wait for us to have our budget debates in an orderly fashion. We must take decisions now. 

And yet too few politicians are willing to confront the question “Where will the money come from?” directly. 

The debate has collapsed into a false frame. Take from those who have the least and give it to the armed forces. I reject that entirely.  

History teaches us that economically powerful nations tend to win wars. Reducing welfare spending increases poverty, weakening our workforce and the resilience of the nation. But if we reject the false frame, we must be brave enough to name a real one. 

There is a line in Withnail and I which is one of the most quietly devastating observations in British culture, “Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t”. It was said of a Cumbrian cottage, but it describes the pension triple lock with uncomfortable precision. 

Let me be clear. I am not calling for cuts to the incomes of pensioners who depend on the state pension to live with dignity, particularly veterans who have served our country with honour and must be protected. 

On the contrary, we should do more to support the most vulnerable older people in our society.  

What I am asking is something more modest, but apparently more controversial. To have a grown-up conversation about whether the pensions triple lock, in its current form, is well targeted and if reforming it would help protect the future freedom of our country? 

The OBR estimates the triple lock will cost over £15 billion more per year by 2029-30 than anticipated when it was introduced. A significant portion of that flows to people who are financially very comfortable.  People who benefited from rising house prices, defined benefit pensions, and the peace dividend that now, belatedly, we are being asked to pay for.  

As it stands, the triple lock is free to those who can afford it. But the cost of funding it, possibly at the expense of our collective security, is being passed on to future generations that can’t. 

The generation now being asked to contemplate defending this country has already endured at least three once-in-a-generation’ economic crises: the financial crash, withdrawal from the European Union and the Covid-19 pandemic.  This generation cannot afford homes. This generation will have no final salary pensions. This generation is suffering because of the decisions of previous decades.  

To ask them to fight for a country that refuses to even discuss whether its most expensive and least targeted benefit should be part of the defence funding conversation is genuinely unjust. 

That said, we should not pretend reform of the triple lock alone can or should pay for the required increase in defence spending.  That would be to fall into the same trap we are seeing with welfare. There is no single solution, and we should not pretend otherwise. 

Britain is navigating a rapidly changing world, and we cannot afford to treat every existing policy as a sacred cow. Those who benefited from the years of peace must be part of the discussion about paying for the security of the future. 

That is not an attack on pensioners. It is a defence of all of us.

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