Torsten Bell

Labour — Swansea West

Speaking in the House of Commons on 15 June 2026

Debate

Contribution

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. Our approach is to increase the basic pension and the new state pension in the years ahead, because pensioners, as well as the population as a whole, have seen living standards pressures in recent years. As her constituent’s case shows, the foundation of not all but the vast majority of pensioners’ incomes is the state pension. The yearly amount of the full new state pension is projected to rise by about £2,100 over this Parliament, reflecting our manifesto commitment to uprate via the triple lock throughout this Parliament. I enjoyed the discussion of the triple lock and the praising of the raising of the level of the state pension from the lows we saw before. It is interesting that—one, two, three, four—four Conservative Members neglected to mention that the pension had to be rescued because of policies put in place by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Decoupling pensions and leaving the uprating significantly behind the level of earnings in the population is why we saw pensioner poverty rates rise to 30% over the course of the 1990s. Everyone has limited time and there is only so much we can choose to—

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