Dennis Reed, founder of the Silver Voices organisation (Image: Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)
And we thought that the campaigners in favour of scrapping the had slunk away to lick their wounds, for at least the rest of this Parliament; no such luck unfortunately.
Both major parties had promised in their manifestos that the Lock was secure for at least five years, but it has only taken 6 months for this vital safeguard to come under pressure again.
Labour has just appointed as its Pensions Minister, one Torsten Bell MP, former Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation and a fierce opponent of the .
Bell led this think-tank for many years, leading architects of the false narrative that pensioners have never had it so good and need to be squeezed.
Appointing a poacher as the gamekeeper of pensions is no mistake. It shows that Labour’s long-term aim is to attack the system, either by abolishing the or by means testing the pension, or both.
When we needed all Opposition politicians to stand firm in support of older people, up steps Kemi Badenoch to pour oil on troubled waters.
She has appeared to suggest that the itself should be means-tested. This is a naïve and incoherent policy.
The is of course just the cost-of-living increase awarded on the each year, and can amount to only a few pounds a week.
To suggest a means-testing apparatus is set up just to claw back a few pennies from that is a ludicrous suggestion and the are already in full retreat over their Leader’s faux pas.
What Badenoch has done, tragically, is to provide cover for Labour to bring forward plans to means-test not the , but the itself.
We say to both major parties, tamper with the and the universal at your peril.
The duopoly of power of Labour and the is already being questioned and if the two parties break their Manifesto promises on this issue, they will both suffer the electoral consequences.