Andy Burnham has confirmed he will keep the pension triple lock unchanged for the rest of this parliament, but will alter it from April 2030, using the savings to help fund a new National Care Service.

Speaking to Labour conference, the prime minister said: “We promised in our manifesto to keep the triple lock unchanged throughout this parliament. I will honour that promise, and I’ll do more. That promise will take the state pension to a record high.”

He said that from April 2030, the state pension will continue to rise every year “at least by prices, or 2.5%”, and will “hold its value relative to earnings over time, so that pensioners will always share in the rising prosperity of the nation.”

The triple lock currently guarantees that the state pension goes up each year in line with either inflation, wage increases or 2.5% – whichever is the highest.

The policy was expected to add billions to the cost of pensions in future years because of Britain’s ageing population. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated that keeping the triple lock until 2050 would cost “between £5 billion and £40 billion per year.”

Labour’s manifesto for the 2024 general election stated: “Our system of state, private, and workplace pensions provide the basis for security in retirement. Labour will retain the triple lock for the state pension.”

Burnham said the planned changes would “generate significant savings”, which the government would use to build the National Care Service. He said some pensioners currently pay care charges out of an income of “nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more”, adding: “Under my plan, this will no longer happen.”

According to figures released by the Labour Party, the triple lock adjustment will save £15 billion a year by the end of the 2030s, rising to £50 billion a year by 2050.

Burnham also set out a pledge that low-income pensioners will not be “dragged into paying income tax” for the rest of this parliament.

“So this is the deal”, Burnham said: “A state pension that rises every year, no care charges, and a high-quality national care service to give peace of mind in later life.”

In his comments on social care, Burnham said the system was “worse today” than when he entered parliament in the early 2000s, and described his own family’s experience, including his grandmother’s engagement ring being “ripped from her finger and stolen in a care home.”

He said: “What an indictment of my generation of politicians, myself included, too cowardly to fix something as basic as the care we give to each other.”

Burnham said he wanted to speak “directly” to care workers. “You are not invisible to me. I see you. I thank you, and I am sorry that my profession has let down yours for so long.”

The prime minister said the government would begin laying the ground for a National Care Service and introduce it in the next parliament, describing it as “a landmark policy as significant as the creation of the NHS itself.” 

He said Louise Casey’s review of social care would advise on how to build it, and that he and Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, would seek to build “maximum national consensus” around the recommendations. He said it would be “fully funded and not through borrowing.”

Burnham’s conference speech comes after Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, warned that scrapping the triple lock would be “electoral suicide”.

Graham told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year, in order to pay for it, to take their security from them, is wrong. I think it’s morally wrong.

“We need to look at other ways. And I can’t understand why we keep going to the well of the poorest in society as a Labour government… if that were to be the case, why are we doing that instead of taxing the rich in our society?”

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