LABOUR’S Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that the Prime Minister needs to call an election if he is planning to drop the triple lock on state pensions.
He told GB News: “My message to Rishi Sunak today is that if he’s no longer committed to the triple lock, which he promised in the manifesto, that he stood on the last election, if he thinks it’s no longer affordable, then he’s got a responsibility to go back to the public and ask for a fresh mandate for a different policy because Rishi Sunak wasn’t elected by the British people.
“He wasn’t even elected by Conservative Party members who rejected him in favour of Liz Truss, let’s not forget, so if he wants to do something different in this Parliament, he’s got to go back to the country and ask for a fresh mandate.
“From our perspective, we are worried about the cost of living, we’re worried about the impact it’s having on pensioners, specifically, particularly pensioners on lower incomes, as well as other families who are struggling.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he continued: “The challenge that we increasingly face as we think about our next manifesto, is the economy and the public finances have been driven into such a state by the Conservatives.
“So we’re being really careful about the promises and the pledges that we make so that our manifesto is one that people can have absolute confidence in, in terms of Labour’s ability to deliver.
“We’ve been saying this for four months now. Hopefully the message is getting through that there are probably lots of things that we would like to do that won’t be in our manifesto, because we simply won’t be able to afford them, but on this issue of the triple lock, we’ll revisit that again closer to the election.”
On the news that the economy shrank by 0.5% in July, said: “It is deeply concerning because, and this is at the heart of Labour’s argument about the economy for the next election – why was it that the last Labour government was able to invest record levels in our public services and keeping people’s pay up and making sure we didn’t have things like National strikes in the NHS?”
