Flipping public opinion on the triple lock was Burnham magic – he’ll need more of it to see his social care plans through | Polly Toynbee
Burnham's conference speech has achieved a remarkable reversal in public opinion on the pensions triple lock. Before his speech, around 65% of the public supported maintaining the triple lock (which guarantees pensions rise faster than average incomes), with support even higher among pensioners. After linking triple lock reform to creating a national care service, polling now shows 48% support Burnham's plan with just 28% against, according to YouGov, with Survation finding 64% backing it.
This represents a rare political achievement, as Toynbee notes she cannot think of another conference speech that reversed public opinion on such a sensitive policy. The key was connecting two disparate policy areas emotionally. Burnham has committed to improving care worker pay and conditions, with a fair-pay agreement already underway and a new national pension scheme for care workers announced this week. However, implementing a truly reformed social care system faces enormous challenges, given that care is currently fragmented across roughly 19,000 organisations, with complex questions about funding and who pays.
- Speech reversed public opinion on pension reforms in days
- Linked triple lock reform to creating national care service
- Actual implementation of care reform faces major obstacles
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The "triple lock" is a guarantee that pensions automatically rise each year by whichever is the highest of three measures: inflation, average wage growth, or a minimum of 2.5%. Since its introduction, this policy has been politically very difficult to change because it directly affects people already in retirement, who are a powerful voting group.
Social care is the day-to-day support provided to elderly people and others who need help with tasks like washing, dressing and meals. England's care system is currently run by around 19,000 separate organisations, making it fragmented and difficult to manage. Care workers are often poorly paid and face difficult working conditions, and the system has long been underfunded.
For decades, attempts to reform either pensions or social care have proven politically difficult because both directly affect voters who feel strongly about these issues. Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester's mayor, has proposed linking the two: suggesting that reform of the triple lock could help fund improvements to social care and care worker pay. This approach differs from previous reform attempts, which typically tried to address each policy area in isolation.