I switched on the radio and, almost immediately, they were talking about the triple lock. It seems to be everywhere at the moment, and lately the argument has sharpened. It is no longer just: can we afford this? It is: wouldn’t that money be better spent on younger people who are struggling to find work?
I am one of the people they were talking about. My state pension has suddenly become money that might instead help somebody decades younger than me get a foothold in life.
My first instinct was slightly defensive. I have worked since I was 16 and paid national insurance for decades. I do not think older people should be made to feel as though we are taking money from the young simply by receiving the pension we were told would be there.
But then another thought followed. At 69, I receive the state pension and would struggle without it. But I also have an occupational pension, savings and freelance income. I also own my home outright. When the state pension rises, I notice it and I am glad of it, but I cannot honestly say an extra few pounds a week changes my life in the way it might for someone living almost entirely on that income.
That is where the awkwardness sits. Not in having planned and saved for decades, but in being offered exactly the same protection as somebody for whom every additional pound is the difference between managing and not.
My mother is 93 and receives the old-style state pension, along with a small pension from my father’s employment that has not increased in more than 20 years. She worries about rising prices, and for her the value of the state pension really matters. We are both, officially, pensioners. Our lives could hardly be less alike.
A friend of mine who is approaching retirement made the same point from another direction. She has no substantial occupational pension. She brought up children, worked part-time for periods and never had the sort of career that came with a generous final-salary scheme. When I mentioned the debate, her reaction was immediate: how would she manage if the protections around the state pension were weakened?
I need to hear that because it is easy to assume everyone has private pensions, savings or some other safety net. They do not.
At the other end of the spectrum, I know people who had highly paid careers, excellent final-salary pension schemes and substantial other forms of income. For them, the state pension is almost incidental. The annual increase might mean a nicer holiday or a few extra meals out. It is not the difference between managing and not managing.
That is why I struggle with the way we talk about pensioners as though we are one homogeneous group. It includes people in their late sixties who are still working and earning, people caring for partners or grandchildren, people with serious health problems, people renting in later life, people who own their homes outright and people like my mother in their nineties.
The triple lock was introduced because the state pension had fallen behind earnings. A measure designed to rebuild its value has gradually become something we treat almost as permanent – even though today it applies across a pensioner population whose circumstances could hardly be more varied.
I can see why some younger people look at the triple lock and wonder where their equivalent protection is. They may be paying enormous rents or mortgages, childcare costs and energy bills while working in careers that feel far less secure than those many of my generation entered. Some do not expect there to be a meaningful state pension by the time they reach retirement.
‘If money genuinely could help a young person stuck outside work get a start, I find it hard to argue that I need every last increment of triple-lock protection’ (Photo: Ilona Gierach)It’s hard to dismiss the fact that younger workers are being asked to fund a guarantee they themselves may never enjoy. If you are 30, paying high rent or a huge mortgage, dealing with stagnant wages and insecure work, I can understand why watching my pension rise automatically each year might feel unfair.
When I read that one proposal is to use savings from ending the triple lock to reduce the cost of employing under-25s, the argument becomes much more concrete. The British Chambers of Commerce estimates that moving to inflation-only increases could save around £3.3bn over two years. The trade-off becomes clearer: an extra uplift for someone like me, or a young person getting their first foothold in work.
If money genuinely could help a young person stuck outside work get a start, I find it hard to argue that I need every last increment of triple-lock protection more than they need that opportunity. That does not mean I do not need my state pension. I do. The pension itself matters to me, but the annual triple-lock uplift is welcome rather than essential.
I do not feel guilty for receiving my pension. What I feel is more like unease. I resist the idea that this should become a morality tale in which pensioners are the villains and young people the victims. Many older people genuinely need the protection of the triple lock. Some have no occupational pension, little in savings and no realistic way of increasing their income through work. Some are in poor health, caring for a partner or still paying rent.
Equally, not every younger person is struggling and not every pensioner is comfortable. That is why I do not think the answer is simply to scrap the triple lock and declare the problem solved. But nor do I think we should pretend the current arrangement is perfectly fair simply because it is universal.
The real divide is not young against old. It is people with financial security against people without it, and there are plenty of both in every generation.
A state pension that keeps its value matters enormously to some people my age and barely registers for others. Any honest conversation about the triple lock has to start there, not with a headline about pensioners versus the young, but with the less comfortable admission that we were never really one group to begin with.
Dr Denise Taylor is a chartered psychologist and author who writes about later life and exploring meaning beyond full-time work. Her latest book, ThriveSpan: Walking Gently Into What Matters Now, is out now.
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