Splits emerge as Labour's Deputy Leader says party 'committed to triple lock' but Burnham prepares to signal its end
Andy Burnham is poised to signal the end of the pensions triple lock in his major speech today at the Labour Party conference.
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He is expected to say that the system is not working in its current form and should be reviewed in the party's next manifesto.
Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 manifesto committed to keeping the policy, which requires the state pension to rise in line with inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent every year.
However Education Secretary Lucy Powell told LBC this morning: "We are absolutely committed to the triple lock, it's in the manifesto... the bigger conversation about how we're going to tackle social care, that's a longer term conversation we will have.
"We are committed to pensions, the value of them going up, listeners can be assured by that, £2,000 over this parliament.
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"Our manifestos are a manifesto and we're half way through delivering this one. We don't write future manifestos this far out.
"Social care is already being paid for today, some people lost their lives savings, you can't get insurance against it.
"The biggest pressures on A&E are those who should be looked after in care in the community. We cannot ignore it any longer."
The head of the Unite union told LBC this morning she would 'caution' Mr Burnham against making changes to the pensions triple lock
Sharon Graham said the prime minister would be "going to the wrong place to save money" to pay for social care reforms
There is mounting speculation the pensions triple lock could be reformed to fund Mr Burnham's plans to overhaul the social care system.
The Prime Minister is expected to use his address to set out a new course for a “Britain where people feel the country has their back again”.
He will flesh out his plans for free social care in England, promise measures on youth unemployment and public control of utilities – with a pledge to hold an “honest conversation” about tough issues.
Echoing the Liverpool conference’s slogan of “Hope again”, Mr Burnham will tell party members that “hope comes from honesty and from saying the things politicians usually avoid”.
He will also announce a new publicly-owned “Great British Grid” in a bid to bring UK energy costs down in line with European nations within a decade.
The Prime Minister will say: “We can’t carry on as we are. Politics-as-usual has taken Britain backwards.
“More of the same isn’t good enough and isn’t going to get us where we need to be.”
And he will revisit the themes of his first speeches in office, criticising the centralisation of power in the hands of “vested interests” and promising a break from the “flawed thinking of the last 40 years”.
He said he wants a UK with “more control of the basics so that we can make it more functional again”.
Social care is likely to feature prominently in the speech, with the Prime Minister suggesting on Monday he would set out more detail of his plans to fund reform of the system.
Mr Burnham has previously said he intends to spend what “political capital” he has on reforming social care, an issue he tried to address as health secretary under Gordon Brown.
Those proposals, which would have seen care funded by a levy on estates, was condemned by opponents as a “death tax” and foundered after Labour’s defeat in the 2010 election.