Kemi Badenoch in row over triple-lock pensions interview question
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The Conservative Party leader has been called on to ‘urgently clarify’ what she meant in an LBC interview. Kemi Badenoch has come under fire after she was asked whether the Conservative Party would look at the triple-lock pension system in a radio interview.
![[Ms Badenoch criticised the government’s new policy of means-testing the winter fuel payment]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/16/18/9143b62197d0cf70391c29c116e2c71eY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM3MTM2OTIx-2.78705825.jpg)
The leader of the opposition was asked on LBC on Thursday evening about how certain people benefit from triple-lock when, the caller claimed, they do not need it. The current system ensures state pensions rise by whichever is highest out of the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent.
![[Ms Badenoch’s shadow chancellor Mel Stride recently said the triple-lock was “unsustainable”]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/12/12/cdf844acc41c767c9b6a62ebb39d7f0cY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM2NzcxMzE4-2.76461012.jpg)
Ms Badenoch responded by saying that was the kind of policy she wanted to have “looked at”. When asked by host Iain Dale if she meant she wanted to look at the triple-lock system, the opposition leader responded: “No, we are going to look at means-testing. Means-testing is something which we don’t do properly here.”.
She then criticised the government’s new policy of means-testing the winter fuel payment. “I always said, for example, that millionaires should not be getting the winter fuel payment,” Ms Badenoch said. “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 that we need to be looking at.”. She pointed out the triple-lock policy was something the Tories supported throughout its 14 years in government after it was enacted by David Cameron in 2010, but “we need to make sure we are growing”.
