Mess with pensions at your peril, Mr Johnson

THIS newspaper has been an unashamed supporter of Boris Johnson and his Government over its determination to get Brexit done and take a tough stance in the talks; its efforts to defeat the scourge of Corbyn’s hard-Left politics; and, most importantly, to lead this country through the coronavirus crisis.

But that does not mean we are afraid to be a critical friend and point out where the Government is getting it wrong. Such a case would be any decision to break the manifesto promise to maintain the triple lock on the state pension guaranteeing an annual increase of at least 2.5 per cent.

The suggestion that the Government is planning to drop a policy that Conservatives brought in after the 2010 election would be a betrayal of Britain’s pensioners and morally reprehensible.

Thanks to the triple lock, pensioner poverty in the UK has been largely eliminated. With final salary private pensions becoming a thing of the past the state pension will take on a much more important role to avert pensioner poverty.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has done an excellent job in this crisis, must avoid the temptation to attack pension protections as a way to pay the coronavirus debt.

If Messrs Johnson and Sunak have any doubt about this, all they need to do is remember what happened to Theresa May in 2017 when she lost a massive lead to Corbyn’s Labour just at the hint that her government would look at the triple lock and scrap some pensioner benefits.

Unlike the screaming students we have seen desecrating monuments recently, pensioners vote and they have earned their support in old age.

They are not to be messed with.