Andy Burnham: I’ll keep the triple lock, and give pensioners a tax cut

Andy Burnham has vowed to keep the state pension triple lock untouched, insisting Labour must honour its manifesto promise to millions of pensioners at a moment of collapsing public trust.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester claims tearing up the manifesto commitment would be a “very damaging thing to do” – defying a growing chorus of voices, including Labour’s own cost of living tsar, calling for it to be ditched.

In a further message to the country’s pensioners, he also said the growing number of older people being drawn into paying income tax through frozen tax thresholds — so-called “fiscal drag” – was an issue the next government “need[s] to look at as well”.

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In an exclusive interview with The i Paper ahead of Thursday’s Makerfield by-election, Burnham was unequivocal that the pensions guarantee was not up for negotiation – despite pledging to cut welfare to fund defence spending.

“The manifesto commitment holds” on the triple lock, he said, warning that to “tear up the manifesto commitments on the triple lock” would be “a very damaging thing to do.”

However, Burnham did not spell out whether he would look to maintain the policy beyond the current Parliament, which is due to end by 2029 at the latest. This is consistent with the current Government position on the future of the policy.

His victory in Makerfield would be seen as a potential mandate for a tilt at No 10. Burnham told the BBC’s Question Time audience last week that he would seek to enter any leadership contest and his interventions on national policy are widely interpreted as part of his pitch to become prime minister.

Burnham says his defence of the triple lock is rooted in the loss of faith in politics he hears on the doorstep.

“I think, given where we are with trust in politics, and particularly following the debate about winter fuel… which still comes up on doorsteps a lot here in Makerfield, I think you’ve got to stick to the manifesto commitment,” he said.

The commitment sets Burnham against a groundswell of opinion – some of it on his own side – that the triple lock has become unaffordable.

Last week, the Resolution Foundation, the left-leaning think-tank once run by the current pensions minister, Torsten Bell, urged the Government to scrap it.

Days later, Lord Walker of Broxton – the Iceland chairman appointed by Sir Keir Starmer as his cost-of-living advisor in February – told the House of Lords the policy was “mathematically unsustainable, politically untouchable and profoundly unfair”, and urged Labour to find “the courage to challenge” it.

Burnham’s defence of the triple lock is rooted in the loss of faith in politics he hears on the doorstep (Photo: Anthony Devlin/Getty)

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned that the triple lock’s annual cost is on course to reach £15.5 billion a year by 2030 – around three times the original estimate – with spending on pensioners forecast to account for about half of total welfare spending by the end of the decade.

Makerfield has a higher proportion of pensioners than the country as a whole – around a quarter of residents are retired – making the seat unusually sensitive to any threat to the pension guarantee, in a contest where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is breathing down Labour’s neck. Despite previously indicating that the triple lock was “open for debate”, Farage has since said Reform UK decided internally that “it’s going to stay”.

In another move likely to resonate with the so-called grey vote, Burnham said he is worried about the growing numbers of pensioners being dragged into paying income tax because of the freeze on tax thresholds, known as “fiscal drag”.

Although tax rates themselves have not risen, the personal allowance has been frozen at £12,570 since 2021, while pensions and wages have increased with inflation.

As a result, forecasts suggest that around 9.3 million pensioners – around three-quarters of all pensioners – could be paying income tax by 2030 if no changes are made.

“What I have heard on doorsteps is pensioners saying … the freezing of the personal allowance has dragged more and more pensioners into tax,” Burnham said. “So, I do think you need to look at that issue as well.”

Pensioners, he added, felt that what “they have got through one way, they are saying now that it’s being taken away in another.”

Andy Burnham walks during a campaign visit to the town of Ashton-in-Makerfield before the forthcoming Makerfield by-election, in Greater Manchester, England, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Super) Burnham on the campaign trail in Ashton-in-Makerfield. He is the Labour candidate for the Makerfield by-election (Photo: Jon Super/AP)

Burnham’s pledge to shield pensioners – and to look again at the tax they pay – is at odds with his pledge to cut welfare to fund defence spending.

In an interview with The Times on Saturday, the former Labour Cabinet minister said he was “not squeamish about saying that the plan would be to reduce the welfare bill”, framing lower benefits spending as the way to create the room for higher military spending.

Burnham was speaking 24 hours after the resignation of John Healey as defence secretary, who quit over the Prime Minister’s refusal to provide more money for defence – a crisis that has left Starmer fighting for survival, with more than 100 Labour MPs already saying he should go.

Reports have suggested the Government was preparing to announce a £13.5bn funding increase for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over the next four years – significantly less than the extra £28bn requested by the department.

Burnham echoed Healey’s alarm without putting a figure on how much the budget should be increased. “The world has changed, so of course we have to change our approach to funding defence, so that’s a given,” he told this newspaper. “We do have to increase defence funding,” he added, and “we have to meet our Nato obligations.”

He added: “Obviously, John [Healey] is somebody that we’ve all worked with. He’s a man of great decency, held in high regard. And obviously when John does something like that, or takes a position, people will look carefully at what he’s saying.”

Those Nato obligations have grown sharply. At last year’s summit in The Hague, the UK and its fellow members agreed to raise defence and security spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 – at least 3.5 per cent on core military capabilities and a further 1.5 per cent on wider security and resilience, such as infrastructure and cyber defence – more than double the previous 2 per cent target.

Starmer signed Britain up to the pledge, but it has yet to be matched by a detailed funding plan.

WIGAN, ENGLAND - JUNE 13: Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham greets supporters as he attends to deliver a speech and announcement on apprenticeships at Wigan St Jude's ARLFC amateur rugby league football club as he campaigns as Labour candidate ahead of the Makerfield by-election. on June 13, 2026 in Wigan, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Burnham says ‘we have to change our approach to funding defence’ (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)

Burnham believes a ten-year investment and procurement plan is needed.

He claims this should include “a new generation of council housing, modern homes that are cheaper to rent, cheaper to run”, which would significantly bring down the benefits and housing bill and “create the headroom…for the extra investment for defence.”

Burnham insists the ballooning welfare bill, which is set to reach £406bn by the end of the decade, can be brought down without what he calls “crude cuts”. “We do need to get the welfare bill down, but that means, to me, not crude cuts, but rethinking the education system, rethinking how we support young people in these modern times,” he said.

His prescription is to hand far more power over welfare reforms to city regions like his own. Burnham draws on Greater Manchester’s experience of running devolved employment support programmes.

Since 2014, the city region has pioneered its “Working Well” model, which combines employment support with health, skills and housing services and relies on dedicated key workers rather than a standardised national approach. The programme was one of the first examples of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) devolving control over employment support to a city region.

According to figures from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Working Well has supported more than 70,000 residents and helped over 25,000 people into work.

More recently, Burnham has promoted a wider “Live Well” model, bringing together councils, the NHS, voluntary organisations and Jobcentre services to provide tailored support for people facing barriers to employment. He argues that locally designed services are better able to address the health, skills and social issues that keep people out of work and has repeatedly called for ministers to devolve more welfare and employment support powers to city regions.

“This is an area where I would strongly advocate that the country goes down the greater devolution route,” he said.

“We’ve pioneered that in Greater Manchester, so we took a different way of supporting people. Not the tick box top-down approach sometimes used by the DWP,” he said, claiming the approach delivers “twice the rate of people back to work … than you do through the computer says no approach sometimes operated by the DWP.”

Attacking the culture of the benefits system, he said: “If people fear having interaction with the DWP, how on earth is that going to move them forward?”

Andy Burnham: I’ll keep the triple lock, and give pensioners a tax cut

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