So, Simon, you've been looking at the debate surrounding the triple lock protection for pensions.

What's going on here? What is the triple lock, first of all?

What it is is a guarantee that the state pension will rise by the greater of three numbers.

That is either inflation, the rise in average wages, or 2.5%.

Now, the tricky component of this equation is 2.5%.

And that says an awful lot about the world that we live in now,

about the low inflation, low wage, low growth,

which is all linked to those two things world, that basically the two and a half

percent number is giving us the big problem. And let's face it, two and a half percent is a pretty

measly number. Yet, this has become a serious hot topic. It was brought in by the coalition

government. It was announced in 2010. And the idea was that basically it was to try and deal with those scenarios.

Where do you remember stories about pensioners getting a 75P rise and stuff like that?

It was to try and deal with that scenario because what was happening was that their pensions were going up with inflation.

Now, the way that economists like to measure pensions is as replacement income.

So basically, how much of the average wage would the state pension replace?

Now, because they were linked to inflation and wages had been rising at a rate that was higher than inflation,

remember those crazy days of real pay rises.

Pensioners were falling behind in the income stakes.

And also there is this argument that obviously the inflation number that we get doesn't

really reflect inflation for everyone because everyone's inflation rate is different.

And actually that the inflation rate for older people is considerably higher because they

have to spend more money on the kind of essentials that go up by more than the average inflation rate. And so this was brought in to try and do something about it. And to be perfectly

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