Andy Burnham will signal he is prepared to look at scrapping the pensions triple lock to fund a national care service, telling the Labour conference he will be willing to make difficult arguments to tackle the UK’s intractable issues such as social care.
Government sources have suggested the prime minister will signal his willingness to review the policy but stop short of a pledge to scrap it altogether. The Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said the move would be “electoral suicide”, with an end to the triple lock likely to be attacked by the Conservaties and Reform.
In his speech, he will promise “an honest conversation” with the public, saying: “Hope comes from honesty and from saying the things politicians usually avoid.”
Graham said Burnham had not committed to scrapping the policy, which ensures the state pension increases annually by either inflation, average wage growth or 2.5% – whichever is highest.
“When we met with Andy this week, it certainly wasn’t mentioned,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “But I do think that it’s important that Labour make sure that working-class people know that they’re on their side, and this would be a direction of travel that would say the opposite to that.”
Asked whether the lock should be overhauled to fund social care, Graham said: “What I understood the national care service to be was a universal benefit: everybody paid in and everybody gets out, and that is what actually the principle of that is.
“Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year in order to pay for it, to take away their security, is wrong. I think it’s morally wrong.”
Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, said the party remained committed to the triple lock, which was in its manifesto. “The triple lock has really delivered for pensioners, in this country, over the course of this parliament,” she told Sky News.
“I think we’re going to see [the] state pension rising by about £2,000 a year, significantly, and that’s really important so pensioners … can know that their income is secure and will continue to rise over the course of this parliament.
“I don’t know what Andy’s going to say about that today, but I know that what he’s talking about is this big conversation about solving these big problems, but being really honest with people that they come at a cost.
“They do come at a cost. You can’t just solve the social care crisis without having the big conversations about how you’re going to do this.”
The housing secretary Angela Rayner said Burham would start a “brave” conversation on the funding of social care. “I think he’s absolutely right to start the conversation,” Rayner told Sky.
“We’ve got a prime minister who said, I am okay with burning through all my political capital to the point where it might finish me off, on the basis of my legacy will be something better and different.”
Having ousted Keir Starmer from office, Burnham has spent much of his first few weeks promising a radical shift in tone and policy.
He will tell the conference on Tuesday: “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.”
Though the conference has been upbeat, Burnham will tell Labour delegates he wants to strike a serious tone with his speech and address some of the most intractable issues in British politics, such as social care, energy costs and youth inactivity.
In the speech, the prime minister will say that he will resist “the usual tub-thumping conference speech … the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed”.
He will say “everyone wants less drift and more direction” and that he will “answer that call” today. His offer – expected to contain a number of new policies – will be “a more serious prospectus for Britain than people have been offered in a generation”.
“I accept people will not agree with every part of it, but I believe it can turn Britain around,” he will say.
