'Morally Wrong': Union Boss Slams Andy Burnham Over Plan To Axe Pensions Triple Lock

A major trade union boss has described plans to axe the pensions triple lock as “morally wrong”.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, hit out amid mounting speculation that Andy Burnham will hint at scrapping the policy in his speech to the Labour conference on Tuesday.

Under the triple lock, the state pension is guaranteed to go up by either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average wages every year.

Although Labour has promised not to abandon the policy before the next election, Burnham is expected to say that it could go after that in order to help pay for his reforms to social care for the elderly.

But speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme just hours before the PM’s speech, Graham warned that Labour will pay a heavy price if it “picks the pocket of pensioners”.

She said: “I think that it’s really important that everyday people know the direction of Labour, and I think it’s important that they can see that the ‘who pays’ question is not going to be workers and the working class.

“Workers and the working class have been paying since 2008, they’ve got absolutely nothing left to give. It’s empty.

“What we need to do now, instead of trying to go and pick the pocket of pensioners, we need to move over to the other side of the equation and look at things like wealth taxes way before we try to stop something like the triple lock. It’s wrong.”

She added: “Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year in order to pay for it to take away their security is wrong. I think it’s morally wrong.

“We need to look at other ways and I can’t understand why we keep going to the well of the poorest in our society as a Labour government ... instead of taxing the rich in our society, which for some reason we seem to have an allergy to.”

Graham said that axing the triple lock would be like when Keir Starmer removed winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners.

That decision, just days after he became prime minister in 2024, sparked a furious backlash which eventually led to an embarrassing U-turn.

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