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Pensioners will be protected should Nigel Farage become Prime Minister after he announced Reform UK would keep the triple lock. Despite months of speculation over the party’s position on the policy, which Mr Farage once decried as unaffordable, the Reform leader announced in a press conference that pensioners should “reap rewards later in life.”

Mr Farage announced the move alongside his treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick MP, as he committed the party to ensuring the state pension went up line with inflation, earnings or 2.5%. Previously Mr Farage has said the policy was unaffordable, but confirmed that Reform would be laying out sweeping cuts to the benefits system – said to be worth tens of billions – which would ensure the triple lock could be paid for “many, many times over.”

Speaking to the Daily Express Mr Farage said that “everything is unaffordable, we are running a massive deficit, there is no item of expenditure today that is affordable – we’re skint!” He explained that was why Reform would be taking an axe to the benefits system, which Reform said would put “alarm clock Britain” first, whilst protecting pensioners and those approaching pension age who “have actually worked and paid into the system.”

The Conservative Party declined to comment on their position on maintaining the triple lock, first introduced by David Cameron, when approached by the Daily Express. Hailing the change, Dennis Reed of the campaigning organisation Silver Voices said Reform was the “first party to commit to the Triple Lock for the next Parliament and now we are looking for Labour and the Conservatives to follow suit.”

A Conservative Party spokesman said “you can’t trust a word Reform say on the Triple Lock. One minute it is under review, the next it is party policy. It is increasingly evident that Robert Jenrick is seeking to push Nigel Farage towards backing a series of unfunded commitments, with no credible plan for delivery.”

They did not comment on whether or not the triple lock was still party policy. Mr Jenrick said that he wanted “Express readers to know that a Reform Government will support the triple lock, and we’ll do everything that we can to provide security in older age.

“It’s incredibly important that people who have worked their whole lives, paid into the system, have that certainty in the last decades of their life, and it would be completely wrong for a Government to pull the rug from underneath people who are on fixed incomes at a time when bills are rising and life for many people is very tough.”

Addressing what critics of the party say is a change in policy, Mr Jenrick hinted that he had won Mr Farage over saying “we gave this decision a lot of thought because it’s a big commitment and we wouldn’t be making it unless Nigel and I were both very confident that we can deliver upon it.”

He revealed that Mr Farage had given him and his team the time they needed to lay out how Reform could reform public finances to ensure that they were on a more sustainable footing, and back pensioners.

More details on the parties plan for reforming the welfare state is expected in the coming weeks, but Mr Jenrick told the Express they planned to “get rid of benefits for recent arrivals to the country, scrap foreign aid for rich countries, get rid of the Net-zero subsidies and reduce the welfare bill for people who are choosing not to work.”

He added: “By doing those things we can make the savings unnecessary to deliver this and to ensure that we put the public finances on a more sustainable footing than they are today now.”

The Daily Express has long campaigned to protect the triple lock, and the announcement from Reform marks a major victory for readers of this paper.

Mr Jenrick revealed that Nigel Farage had been “worried” about committing to the policy as “the public finances are a mess.” This is due to “successive governments”, including Labour Mr Jenrick’s former party the Conservatives, having “mismanaged the economy and have left us with a massive national debt.”

He confirmed that Reforms previous reluctance to outright commit to the triple lock came from Mr Farage not wanting to “make a very big financial commitment, unless he could look pensioners in the eye and say, with absolute certainty, that we would do this and that we wouldn’t let them down.”

Critics of the policy blasted the move as unaffordable, with Dr Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs saying the pledge was “hugely disappointing”.

He added: “No major party is willing to be honest with voters about the cost of Britain’s growing pension obligations. The triple lock is one of the most expensive commitments in British public policy, it is an electoral bribe with a compound interest rate.”

Joanna Marchong, of the Adam Smith Institute, said: “Reform’s commitment to the triple lock will come as a surprise to the many voters who listened to them tout how unsustainable and unaffordable it is.”

She warned that forthcoming plans by Reform to slash welfare would “not be sufficient to fund the growing pension bill that costs hundreds of billions of pounds every year.”