PM, in first speech to party conference as leader, insists his plans are a ‘good deal’ for older people
Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has apparently confirmed that Andy Burnham will float the prospect of getting rid of the pensions triple lock to help fund the creation of an NHS-style care service.
Asked about the prospect on Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Rayner said that Burnham was “absolutely right to start the conversation” and that he was being “brave”.
The high principle on this is that people have paid in all their lives. They are willing, I think, to look at that.
What they don’t want is what they consider to be, quite frankly, incompetent politicians that are going to take something from us to fill a black hole.
When we met with Andy [Burnham] this week, it certainly wasn’t mentioned.
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.
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.
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