Kemi Badenoch looks at ‘means testing triple lock’ in huge blow to pensioners

leader has revealed the Tories are “going to look at means testing” the pension .

During a phone-in from a member of the public while on Iain Dale’s LBC show, the Tory leader said the party needs to “keep growing” with its approach to this area, despite supporting it while in power.

Ms Badenoch’s comments follow the Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride claiming that the is “unsustainable”. State pensions currently rise each year by whichever is highest out of the rate of inflation, average earnings or a minimum of 2.5%.

However, the Leader of the Opposition said: “We’re going to look at means testing [the ].” She added: “Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here.

“I always said, for example, that millionaires should not be getting the .

“But what Rachel Reeves has done is the extreme version of that, where people who are actually on the breadline have had their taken away.

“We don’t have a system that knows who should get what. That’s the sort of thing that we need to be looking at.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Sir came under fire for being “anti-pensioner” after appointing former think tank chief Torsten Bell, who called for the to be abolished.

Mr Bell described the as “indefensible” and called for it to be axed in his role as chief executive of the Resolution Foundation in 2020.

He claimed that benefits for pensioners were rising faster than those claimed by working-age people and urged the Government at the time “to replace the , and pay more attention to the contrast with working-age benefits”.

In an article written jointly with Resolution Foundation researcher Laura Gardiner, Mr Bell said: “Whatever your view on a rising relative to earnings, the contrast with the continued erosion of the value of working-age benefits is indefensible.”

Mr Bell also wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that the ” needs sorting”.