A potential Tory rebellion was brewing on Tuesday night as MPs bristled at suggestions Prime Minister Liz Truss may scrap the pensions triple lock.
Conservative MPs said pensioners “should not be paying the price” for the cost of living crisis after Downing Street indicated that Ms Truss could ditch her pledge to increase state pensions in line with inflation.
The lock ensures that pensions rise in line with whichever is highest out of inflation, wages or 2.5 per cent.
It comes after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told ministers to find savings in their department budgets to plug the financial shortfall prompted by Ms Truss’s mini-budget. On Monday, he announced a dramatic reversal of several of Ms Truss’s flagship policies to save £32 billion and calm the financial markets.
Asked whether the triple lock would be scrapped, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Ms Truss and Mr Hunt “are not making any commitments on individual policy areas” but decisions would be made “through the prism of what matters most to the most vulnerable”. They insisted the decision to review the triple lock was “mutual”.
But two Tory MPs said they would not vote for a suspension to the triple lock, in an indication that any u-turn on the policy could spark a large-scale rebellion on the back benches.
Maria Caulfield, MP for Lewes, tweeted: “I will not be voting to end the pensions triple lock. Pensioners should not be paying the price for the cost of living crisis whether caused by the war in Ukraine or mini budgets.”
And Steve Double, MP for St Austell and Newquay, also confirmed he would vote against legislation to change the triple lock were it to be tabled.
Uprating state pensions in line with wages would effectively amount to a real-terms cut, as inflation currently stands at 9.9 per cent. It is expected to rise further when the Office for National Statistics publishes its Consumer Price Index measure of inflation on Wednesday, on which changes to benefits and pension payments are calculated.
The changes would affect around 12.5 million who receive a state pension.
Cabinet Office minister Brendan Clarke-Smith on Tuesday evening denied that the triple lock was under threat, dismissing the reports as “speculation”.
“They said to all departments we need to look at whether you’re making efficiency savings and its taxpayers’ money that we’re looking after,” he told Times Radio.
“The problem is people have read a little too much into that, and by saying that nothing’s off the table, they’ve picked out specific things – whether it’s the triple lock, or as another example, energy bills.”
Asked if that meant pensioners could “breathe a little easier”, he said: “I would say so… yes.”
Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Mr Hunt did not rule out a suspension to the triple lock but refused to comment further on “individual policy areas”.
The PM's spokesman stood by the commitment of increasing defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030, after armed forces minister James Heappey threatened to quit if the pledge was abandoned.
New polling released on Tuesday found that Tory party members appear to be turning on Ms Truss, with 83 per cent saying she is doing a bad job as Prime Minister. More than half said they believed Ms Truss should resign.
Former Cabinet minister Michael Gove said it was a matter of when and not if Ms Truss was removed as Prime Minister.
“The question for any leader is what happens when the programme or the platform on which you secured the leadership has been shredded,” he told a private event on Tuesday afternoon.
He said that the role of Prime Minister was “now a jobshare between Jeremy Hunt and the bond markets”.
Ms Truss held a meeting with Tory MPs from the European Research Group on Tuesday night in a bid to shore up her position. Brexiteer Mark Francois described the meeting as “positive” and said the PM had stood by her commitment to a “robust outcome” on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
