The prime minister, Andy Burnham, has said the state pension triple lock will end in its current form from 2030, in a change intended to help pay for a new national care service in England.
Speaking at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, his first as leader, Burnham said changing the triple lock would generate "significant savings".
Under the plan the state pension would continue to rise every year by at least inflation or 2.5 per cent. The element being removed is the automatic annual link with average earnings.
The triple lock was introduced in 2010 by the coalition government. It was designed to ensure that the value of the state pension was not overtaken either by the increase in the cost of living or by the incomes of working people.
The proposed national care service would be free at the point of use in England. Burnham called it a "landmark" policy that would be "as significant as the creation of the NHS itself and utterly essential to securing its future", and said it would be "fully funded and not through borrowing".
Much of what he set out relates to his party's manifesto at the next general election rather than to immediate legislation, and the care service is being developed to be put before the country in 2029.
The pension change would take effect in 2030, four years after the speech announcing it.
It is worth being precise about the arithmetic. The triple lock is not named after a mechanism. It is named after a count. There were three measures, the pension rose by whichever was highest, and the number in the title was the number of measures.
From 2030 there will be two.
This newspaper takes no view on the policy, which is a matter for Parliament, and every view on the label, which is a matter for counting. A lock with one of its three elements removed is a double lock. The name was never a description of strength. It was an inventory.
The surviving pair repay examination on their own terms. Inflation is an index. Two and a half per cent is a number. Neither is a lock, and the measure being removed, which tracked what other people were paid, was arguably the only one doing any locking.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has accordingly proposed that the title be uprated annually in the manner of the pension itself, rising or falling with the number of measures actually in force.
Under that system the policy would be a triple lock until 2030 and a double lock thereafter, which is administratively tidy and requires no legislation, only subtraction.
The state pension will still rise every year. The lock will still be called triple. Two of it will be locked.