Pensioners risk losing £1,000 as MPs call for an end to ‘triple lock’ rise: Bid to end ‘unfair’ inflation protection and give cash to ‘millennials’ instead

Labour MP Frank Field led calls for an end to the ‘triple lock’ guarantee
Says it's 'unfair' when children are twice as likely as pensioners to be poor
Triple lock system was introduced four years ago by David Cameron
Increases state pension by inflation rate, rise in average earnings or 2.5%

By Glen Owen, Political Correspondent For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 22:02 GMT, 5 November 2016 | Updated: 01:21 GMT, 6 November 2016

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Pensioners should have their income rises pegged to release more money for struggling youngsters, a powerful group of MPs says today.

Labour MP Frank Field led calls by the Work and Pensions Committee for an end to the ‘triple lock’ guarantee.

He said it was ‘unfair and unsustainable’ when children were twice as likely as pensioners to be living in poverty.

Labour MP Frank Field led calls for an end to the ‘triple lock’ guarantee, saying it was ‘unfair and unsustainable’ when children were twice as likely as pensioners to be living in poverty

The triple lock, which was introduced by David Cameron in 2012, increases the state pension each year by either the rate of inflation, the rise in average earnings, or 2.5 per cent, whichever is highest.

It has pushed the basic state pension to £119.30 a week – or £12,408 a year for a couple.

The MPs’ damning Intergenerational Fairness report says that because pensioners are more likely to vote, they are being showered with handouts while so-called ‘millennials’ – born between 1981 and 2000 – face financial problems.

The MPs call for the triple lock to be replaced by a link to average earnings by the next General Election. If that link had been in place since 2012, it would have cut the annual pension received by a couple by nearly £1,000 by 2020.

The call comes after Theresa May pledged in her first speech as Prime Minister to tackle the ‘growing divide between a more prosperous older generation and a struggling younger generation’.

Although Downing Street insists that the triple lock will stay, Mrs May’s influential chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has argued that it makes it harder to ‘take the pressure off low paid, working people’.

The new report argues ‘blunt instrument’ non-means-tested benefits such as the £2.1 billion-a-year Winter Fuel Payment mean average pensioner household incomes now exceed those of working age families.

The MPs said they had heard reports that some wealthy pensioners boasted of spending the allowance on slap-up meals at top restaurants.

Former PM: The triple lock, introduced by David Cameron, increases the state pension each year by either the rate of inflation, the rise in average earnings, or 2.5%, whichever is highest

After housing costs are taken into account, 14 per cent of pensioners are living in relative poverty, compared with 21 per cent of working-age adults and 28 per cent of children.

The MPs warn that millennials face being the first generation in modern times to be financially worse off than the preceding one, with a majority locked out of the housing market.

A ‘baby boomer’ born just after the Second World War will typically receive 16 per cent more in welfare payments than they pay in taxes.

But a child born in 1975 will receive five per cent less in welfare.

The report follows the call last week by former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith for the triple lock to be abolished, saying it had cost £18 billion.

He said spending on pensions had spiralled ‘out of control’.

Mr Field, aged 75, said: ‘The working young and their children face the daunting challenge of getting on in an economy skewed against them.

‘Home ownership, taken as a given by many in my generation, is out of reach for too many aspiring young people today. At the same time as tightening their belts, they are being asked to support a group that has fared relatively well in recent years.’