Why Andy Burnham's bid to end pension 'triple lock' could come unstuck – Alistair Carmichael

The Prime Minister’s conference declaration of his intention to end the state pension ‘triple lock’ shows him to be a man prepared to take a bold stance on controversial issues.

Everyone wants a pension system that is both financially sustainable and protects the most vulnerable – but Andy Burnham’s decision will cause him more harm than good if he cannot find a meaningful cross-party consensus on the way ahead. I say this from a position of experience and with the benefit of hindsight.

It was Liberal Democrats who drove the introduction of the triple lock in the coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservatives. It was the right thing to do at the time.

READ MORE: What is the pension triple lock, and could any changes impact Scotland?

There is general agreement among politicians that the triple-lock pension guarantee must come to an end at some point, says Alistair Carmichael (Picture: Christopher Furlong) | Getty Images

Pensioners living in poverty

In the 1980s, the Tories had decoupled the pension from earnings and, decades later, we had reached the point where people on the state pension had some of the highest rates of poverty in the country. The triple lock – by which the state pension would rise by either inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5 per cent, whichever was highest – was created as the means by which we would, over time, undo the damage.

A decade earlier, Gordon Brown had identified the same problem but his solution – means-testing top-up payments – had failed because of the complexity of getting the money to those who needed it most. That was the experience, now for the hindsight.

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The partners in the coalition government drove the policy as a government, as governments in the House of Commons do. Liberal Democrats did so with some gusto, Conservatives with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

With hindsight, I think we could have done more to define the end goal of the triple lock – at what point would we think it had served its purpose? To do that, we could have done more to involve the other parties in its construction.

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Triple lock can’t continue indefinitely

Speak to people in all parties today and they will tell you that it cannot continue indefinitely but no one wanted to be the first to say it. I do not think that the triple lock has yet fully served its purpose but I can see that the day must come when it has done. At some point, we must reach a level where we can get off the escalator.

When that day comes, we will need to look at some other mechanism (tied either to earnings or inflation) to ensure that the progress we have made is not undone.

The Prime Minister can be bold today about ending the triple lock in 2030. Being bold is easy in your first 100 days. That same boldness may be more difficult to sustain in four years’ time.

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So why not do things differently now? Get the parties together, set up a cross-party commission to define the purpose of the triple lock and thus to identify the point at which it can change.

Yes, it might mean the government sharing some of the sunlight with other parties but if it gets us to a better outcome, would that be the worst thing in the world?

Alistair Carmichael is the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland