This week, there has been much discussion of the Government’s decision to temporarily suspend the pension ‘triple lock’ for one year. The ‘triple lock’ increases the State Pension by whichever is highest of inflation, annual growth in wages, or a minimum guaranteed 2.5 per cent every year.
The past year has seen unprecedented economic disruption, with millions of working-age people, predominantly in the private sector, suffering from their businesses or employers being shuttered, or from collapsing demand.
As the lockdowns have progressively ended and people have returned to work from furlough or from unemployment, this has reflected in the official statistics as a major rise in wages. Of course, this is an anomaly: there has been no massive wage growth compared to before the pandemic, people have simply resumed being paid.
Pensioner poverty for many is real – although, thanks to past increases in both the state pension and the pension credit, there are 200,000 fewer pensioners in poverty today than a decade ago, and basic state pensions have increased by 41% over the past 11 years compared to 22% in wage growth over the same period.
Therefore, using this Covid-induced distortion of double-digit rate of wage growth to increase pensions would, I believe, be wrong – as pensioners would unintentionally be benefitting from the misery of working-age people. No party had an unprecedented global pandemic in their manifesto – the ‘triple lock’ was designed for ordinary times, so it is right that it is suspended for this single year.
Last week, I held a ‘roundtable’ for local residents with RWE, the developers behind the proposed Rampion 2 wind farm extension. This would involve the construction of a 22-mile onshore cable corridor, up to 50 metres wide, running through Clymping beach and cutting diagonally through a large swathe of the South Downs National Park to a new sub-station at Bolney. I share local residents concerns around this.
While offshore wind power is already playing a valuable role in our journey to Net Zero, there is plenty of capacity available at sites with more reliable wind in the North Sea, so I am unconvinced that West Sussex is the best place for such a large windfarm expansion.
RWE have opened their formal public consultation period on 14 July 2021 and which will close on 16 September 2021. I would strongly encourage local residents encouraged to submit their comments about the Rampion 2 proposal at the following link: https://rampion2.com/consultation/
