Burnham expected to propose triple lock review – is it a good idea?

Reviewing the triple lock does not automatically mean abandoning pensioners.

Its strength is obvious: retirees are protected when inflation bites or wages rise. Its weakness is mathematical. Because pensions receive whichever measure is highest, increases can ratchet upwards faster than either prices or earnings over long periods.

The real debate therefore should not be “keep it or kill it”. It is what outcome we want the State Pension to deliver.

Alternatives include linking pensions primarily to earnings, using an inflation floor, a double lock, or periodically reviewing whether the State Pension provides an adequate minimum income.

But every replacement creates winners, losers and new political risk.

The important thing is certainty. People can spend 30 or 40 years planning for retirement. The uprating system cannot become something that changes every time the public finances get uncomfortable.

The UK needs economic growth and sound money and renew the social contract with British citizens. Reviewing the triple lock makes fiscal sense, but it raises profound questions of fairness. Introduced in 2010 as a catch-up mechanism to rebuild the state pension's value against earnings, it has largely done its job. A ratchet guaranteeing the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5% is an open-ended liability for the public purse, outpacing economic growth over the long run. Yet targeting pensioners will strike many as deeply unfair. They have spent 35 to 40-plus years working and paying National Insurance and on fixed incomes, many cannot return to work to plug a shortfall. With vast sums lost to government waste, asylum accommodation and a surging welfare bill, hitting those who have paid their dues feels misdirected. My answer: replace the ratchet with a stable double lock or a targeted ratio, long-term security for pensioners, fiscal sustainability for the Treasury.

Reviewing the triple lock is sensible because it has become an increasingly expensive and poorly targeted way of protecting pensioners. The state pension should still rise sustainably with living standards, but an automatic ratchet that can outpace both prices and wages creates an ever-growing bill.

The bigger question is whether universal pension benefits remain affordable regardless of someone’s income and wealth. A future government could examine some form of means-testing or tax-based clawback for better-off pensioners, while protecting those genuinely dependent on the state pension. That would be complex and could weaken the contributory principle, but it deserves debate.

With defence, social care and other priorities competing for scarce money, government cannot pretend every expensive promise can remain untouched. The challenge is protecting poorer pensioners without writing ever-larger cheques to those who do not need them.

Reviewing the triple lock isn't the betrayal it's being painted as. It's overdue. The betrayal would be doing it badly. The problem isn't the protection, it's the 2.5% floor. Between 2010 and 2023, the state pension rose 60%, while earnings rose 40%. That's a ratchet paid for by people who will retire later, on less.

So should it go? In its current form, yes. But for millions of retirees the state pension is the bulk of their income. Rip it out carelessly and you push the poorest pensioners straight back towards poverty.

I'd replace it with a double lock, where pensions rise with whichever is higher, prices or wages. Pensioners would never lose ground to the cost of living or fall behind working people, but there'd be no automatic bonus when both are low.

Any change needs at least a decade's notice for today’s workers to prepare, and honesty about the fact that pensioners are already giving some back as the state pension rises above the frozen tax-free personal allowance next April.

The triple lock is expensive and should be reviewed but it's worth remembering why it came in. The government had let the state pension erode and so the opportunity is here to create a robust formula that provides some protection to pensioners and reassures future generations that the state pension will provide for them.