Chancellor refuses to say whether guarantee introduced in 2010 will be honoured this year
Rishi Sunak has given a broad hint that the government will temporarily break the pension triple lock this year in order to prevent the Treasury being landed with a £3bn uprating bill.
The chancellor said there was a need to be fair to taxpayers as well as pensioners in light of a forecast from the Whitehall spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility – that a post-lockdown surge in pay growth would result in the state pension going up by 8% next April.