The announcement that the triple lock we have today will be over in four years time isn’t quite true. There will still be 2.5% increases, CPI inflation increases and there will be an earnings underpin which will come into play in certain circumstances.

So how do people who have worked on the State Pension react?

In my book this links  the two most knowledgeable people about the politics of the state pension that there are. They planned and saw through the changes to the transfer from old to new state pension (which is still in transition). They know where the winners and losers of the inevitable subsidisation are.

Let’s look at what is being said . First Sir Steve Webb..

and now Andy’s Young response

Of course there is a second view that comes from the IFS

I am sure there will be plenty of earnest lectures on how this does or doesn’t save the Exchequer money at the expense of the pension that wrinkles would have got under the old lock and will under the new triple lock.

There will be other conference sessions about long term care for those who need it and how it will be “free”. There will be discussions on how the fate of the elderly will have been rebalanced away from a pension payment to an insurance that in calamity there will be LTC as free as the NHS.

I see this as good news. Because people do not relate to proposed changes as Burnham has mooted, without knowing how they will pay for it. As I have written recently, it is hard to agree to set aside money as tax to the Government without understanding what it’s paying for and now that’s clearer. We will be getting free (er) long term care if we need it and as Webb and Young cotton on to, how free will depend on how effective the new triple lock is as paying for it.

The IFS go on producing charts that we will spend hours trying to understand but the success of this change (which will happen beyond this parliament – which may mean never), is down to our perception of fairness.  Here we will be led by a few people who know and I will follow Webb and Young,

Here is the IFS’ second chart that puts this proposed new triple lock in the perspective of the old triple lock and what would have happened since the introduction of the old triple lock in 2010

Got that? No – I haven’t either and all I can tell from these charts is that folk like us, outside the economist and actuary’s tent, will have to take this new formula as fair or vote against it in 2029.

The real question is – as Young and Webb point out – whether the new triple lock generate enough to pay for the new long term care from the Government. That will undoubtedly be a much more interesting discussion to most of us