He said: "It's a tricky question because the state pension is designed to be the building block of your retirement savings.

"For some people, that is the only income that they have.

"But for many many others, they have some form of private savings to help them get through it.

"It's not generally a supplement to your employment income."

READ MORE: State pension triple lock under threat NEXT YEAR as Gov face big bill

Mr Shaw continued: "The people that have been financially affected by coronavirus tend to be people of working age who have found that they've been furloughed or that their work has dried up.

"Their income has been completely decimated because they haven't been able to operate their businesses rather than those who are retired and already collecting their pensions.

"But there are other factors, like what costs have increased for people.

"Potentially if they're shielding, it might be that paying for additional domiciliary care might be a factor there."

The triple lock stipulates that pensions must rise by whichever is greater of the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 percent.

However, the Government could end up ditching the guarantee amid fears they could end up with a very "expensive" bill in 2021.

Mr Shaw told Express.co.uk: "It seems the Government is anticipating that there is going to be a huge bounce back in income and an increase in earnings during the period where the state pension is up-rated.

"If there is a real bounce back in earnings that could dwarf the 2.5 percent. It could be five percent or seven percent. That would be incredibly expensive for the Government to honour.

"That's not this coming year, it will be next year when that bounce back of earnings happens. This year there's going to be a dramatic decline."