Plans to tamper with the pension triple lock might not be as dangerous for Labour as some believe
Labour’s pension reform tests whether linking slower state pension growth to social care can overcome a traditionally sensitive electoral divide between generations.
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🔍 WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
Changes to the pension guarantee could reshape retirement incomes and help finance social care, while testing whether voters accept a trade-off between slower pension growth and wider care provision.
KEY TAKEAWAYS...
● Labour plans to change, rather than simply abolish, the state pension triple lock from 2030.
● The revised mechanism would protect pensions against inflation while seeking to keep them aligned with earnings over time.
● Early polling indicates more support than opposition for combining pension reform with a National Care Service.
● The political test is whether support survives once voters focus on the effect on future pension increases.
W hen Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the Labour conference that he is going to change the state pension’s triple lock mechanism, the backlash was immediate. For 15 years, the triple lock has been one of the few genuinely untouchable policies in British politics.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, warned that Burnham’s plans could amount to “electoral suicide”. And Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, said the prime minister was considering “an offensive against our elderly”.
But, interestingly, the public’s reaction has been considerably more positive, reflecting changing views over what Britons consider fair and acceptable around elderly care and incomes.
Despite some of the headlines, the triple lock is not being scrapped. Rather, the government’s proposed reform from 2030 envisions the state pension rising each year by the highest of inflation, 2.5%, or whatever is needed to keep pace with earnings.
XTRA | What is the Pension Triple Lock?
The triple lock is a guarantee that the UK State Pension rises each year by whichever is highest: average earnings growth, inflation as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), or 2.5%. Introduced in 2011, it is designed to protect pensioners’ incomes from rising prices while allowing pensions to benefit when wages grow strongly.
What is being scrapped is the mechanism that pushes the pension ever higher relative to wages. Under the current rules, whenever inflation or the 2.5% floor outpaces earnings growth, the pension gets a bigger rise than wages that year – and keeps that gain permanently.
For the rest of the population, wage growth tends to be a response to inflation – but under the triple lock, pensioners feel the benefit of both (so-called “double counting”). The new rule would still protect pensions against inflation and keep them in line with earnings over time, but would stop these one-off gains from building up year after year.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, had this been applied since 2010, the UK state pension would still have grown 6% faster than prices – but the government would be spending £9 billion a year less than it is today.
The issue that doesn’t split generations
Pensions are an age-sensitive issue, and age is increasingly the biggest divide in British politics.
At the 2024 election, the gap between young and old in support for the main parties was around 30 points. On anything from immigration to climate action, opinions are hugely split along age lines.
Yet pensions are the exception. In 2021, a YouGov poll found that 68% of Britons wanted to keep the triple lock, and just 11% wanted to scrap it. Even 18- to 29-year-olds backed it by 53% to 12%.
As recently as May, support still outweighed opposition among 18- to 34-year-olds by 44% to 22%. Older people hold firmer views, but no age group has ever wanted it gone.
This is not because young people think the system is fair. The same 2021 survey found that only around a quarter of under-40s thought it fair for pensions to rise while workers’ earnings fell, compared with nearly two-thirds of over-60s.
Nor is it because they expect the same deal: most Britons think they will have lower standards in retirement. So what holds the consensus together?
Part of the answer lies in the family. Almost three in ten Britons under the age of 60 expect to give significant financial or practical help to an older relative within the next decade. This research found that asking younger people to consider their own future pensions did nothing to raise their support for government spending on older people.
The only message that increased support for spending on older people was one that stressed how it would ease the burden of looking after parents and grandparents.
The link runs the other way too. Older Britons whose younger relatives are struggling are more supportive of spending on education, childcare and housing. This is driven more by concern for those relatives than by self-interest.
In other words, voters don’t see pensions as a transfer from young to old, but as support that flows through families in both directions. That’s why, unlike most issues, they don’t pit the generations against each other.
And these ties are growing tighter: 43% of 25-year-olds still live with their parents. But this “privileged dependence” helps only those whose families can afford it.
My research points to a further reason for the relative consensus: economic issues divide generations far less than cultural ones. In a survey experiment using appeals adapted from the 2019 UK general election manifestos, I found that older voters did not penalise candidates who promised to prioritise the young.
This was true even when the candidate said it was time to shift attention away from the elderly. Economic appeals moved voters of all ages more than cultural ones did.
Burnham’s real test
As with any research looking into economic policy preferences, the catch comes around who is expected to pay for them. None of the appeals in my experiment asked older voters to pay for anything, but Burnham’s reform does. It asks pensioners to accept slower growth in their own income.
At the same time, it channels the savings into something older voters want: 80% of over-50s back a National Care Service that is free at the point of use. Across the under-50s too, net support for this exceeds 60%, reflecting appetite for reforms that focus on care provision beyond mere income protection.
The early polling suggests Burnham’s triple lock gamble is less dangerous than it looks, with Britons supporting the plan by 48% to 28%.
A Survation poll found 55% of over-65s were in favour and 23% against. Asked if the policy made them more or less likely to vote Labour, over-65s split evenly (21% against 20%), while under-45s swung clearly towards the party. These first reactions suggest the policy is more promising than disastrous for Labour’s electoral prospects.
The triple lock has been protected less by self-interest than by family ties that cut across generations. Framed as a question of how families look after one another, pension reform may be one of the few issues that can bridge the country’s age divide.
🔮 WHAT MATTERS NEXT...
🎯 WHAT TO WATCH NEXT:
● Parliament is expected to vote on the pension changes during this parliament even though the existing guarantee remains until 2030, making the legislation an early test of political resistance to the reform.
● Watch whether the initial 48% to 28% public support for linking triple-lock reform with social care persists as voters receive more detail about pension and care entitlements.
● The scale and timing of savings remain important: estimates vary with economic conditions, while substantial social-care expenditure could arrive before pension reform generates its largest savings.
🎯 MOST LIKELY OUTCOME:
● If Labour maintains the inflation protection and long-term earnings link while presenting social care as the counterpart to slower pension growth, the reform could remain politically viable, although current polling is an early snapshot rather than evidence of durable electoral support.
🎯 WHAT COULD CHANGE THE PICTURE:
● Weak earnings, renewed inflation, unclear care entitlements or evidence that pension savings cannot meet the cost of the National Care Service could materially alter both the fiscal case and public response.
🎯 WHY THIS MATTERS:
● The reform will test whether Britain can change a costly pension guarantee by tying the sacrifice to a visible service that potentially benefits older people and their families.
GOING FURTHER
Burnham to pass law scrapping pension triple lock before next election | The Guardian
Will pensioners be poorer as a result of Burnham scrapping the triple lock? | The Guardian
Burnham to signal willingness to look at scrapping pension triple lock to fund social care | The Guardian
How would Andy Burnham's social care shake-up work? | Financial Times
What can Burnham learn from Scotland's social care system? | Financial Times
How to meet Burnham's ambitions on social care | Financial Times
Sources:
▪ This piece was originally published in The Conversation and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 3 October 2026. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/Number 10. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
