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The triple lock is the “lifeblood” of the state pension system, a campaigner has insisted. Dennis Reed, director of the Silver Voices group for older people, warned against scrapping the policy at a lively Daily Express fringe event at the Tory conference in Manchester.

Under the triple lock, the state pension is uprated each April in line with whichever is highest out of 2.5%, inflation, or earnings growth. Mr Reed said: “The triple lock is very much the lifeblood of the state pension system. Without the triple lock, there is no doubt at all that the state pension would gradually deteriorate again in terms of its value.

“When the link with earnings was broken in the last century, the level of pensioner poverty zoomed and the state pension became 16% of average earnings.

“Now it is 30% as a result largely of the triple lock. You would think pensioners are well off by the way most newspapers and think tanks refer to this generation – the reality is completely different to that.”

Addressing questions over whether the policy is affordable, he added: “We must afford the triple lock on the basis that people should be entitled, after years of contributing to the economy, to a state pension which provides decency in retirement.”

Mr Reed warned of the “stealthy way the triple lock is being undermined” by frozen tax thresholds amid fears pensioners with no other income could be dragged into paying tax in the coming years.

He also vowed to push the Conservatives, Labour and Reform UK to commit to the measure for the duration of the next Parliament.

Mr Reed said: “We’ll try and pin all the parties down to committing that they will keep the triple lock in place for the whole of the next Parliament. That’s certainly our aim.”

But Emma Revell, external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, warned that the policy is not sustainable in the long term.

She said: “I wouldn’t say too generous, but I would say however unsustainable for the future.

“People who are paying today think this isn’t going to be there for me because it is simply unsustainable.”

The Daily Express has long campaigned to protect the state pension triple lock.