Fact check: Kemi Badenoch said she would look at means testing
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“Kemi Badenoch has put pensioners on notice: the Tories would cut the state pension,” Labour said in social media posts. This is untrue, although what Ms Badenoch was talking about is somewhat unclear. At most she said that she would consider means testing the so-called triple lock, which decides how rapidly the state pension rises each year.
The claim is based on Ms Badenoch’s appearance on radio channel LBC on January 16. Although the questioner was asking about means testing the triple lock, at no point does Ms Badenoch directly say she will means test the triple lock. Instead she said that her policy work would look more at means testing. The only policy she directly mentioned was the winter fuel payment.
In response she says: “So that’s exactly the sort of thing that the policy work we’re going to be doing will look at. I’ve always said that we don’t do means testing…”. At this point Ms Badenoch was interrupted by the presenter, who asked: “So you’re actually going to look at the triple lock?”.
Ms Badenoch replied: “No, we’re going to look at means testing. Means testing is something which we don’t do properly here. I’m someone who always said, for example, that millionaires should not be getting the winter fuel payment. “But what Rachel Reeves has done is the extreme version of that where people who are actually on the breadline have had their winter fuel payment taken away. We don’t have a system that knows who should get what. That’s the sort of thing we need to be looking at. Now the triple lock is a policy which we supported throughout our 14 years in Government.”.
