Change to triple lock could see pensioners lose out on £200 a year
Rishi Sunak has been urged to tweak a key metric used for the pensions triple lock under a proposal that could see pensioners lose out on £200 a year.
The Chancellor faces a difficult decision over uprating the state pension this autumn, with concerns that the Covid pandemic has skewed economic data in a way that could force an "artificial" pension spike under the terms of the triple lock.
The mechanism, a 2019 Tory party manifesto pledge, means the state pension must rise each year by whichever is the highest of 2.5 per cent, inflation or average earnings growth.
The latest wage growth data, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday, suggested earnings have increased by 6.6 per cent. However, the ONS also published a new metric for "underlying" earnings data, ...