Author Archives: Joe Wright

Can we afford the Triple Lock? Not as a low tax party

By Joe Wright | Mon 5th October 2026 - 12:32 pm

A tale of two conference speeches: Ed Davey declared the Lib Dems to be the party of low taxes, and outlined £17bn of tax cuts to Income Tax and Fuel Duty, paid for by making a better deal with the EU, whilst Andy Burnham proposed a National Care Service – with an estimated cost of £18bn according to the Health Foundation. Burnham proposed funding this by adjusting the Triple Lock – although he didn’t explain it that well in the speech. The new approach will tackle the “ratchet” effect – where inflation is high one year, wages grow high in the second in response, so the pension grows rapidly twice in a row. The new system will keep it roughly in line with a third of average wages, making it more predictable and affordable. Importantly, it will never decline in real terms.

The triple lock was designed for those halcyon days of the 2010s – low inflation and modest wage growth, not the stagflation of the 2020s which in our hubris we assumed was condemned to the history books of the 1970s.

Now Burnham’s costings don’t actually add up – his proposal will start to save substantial sums over the long term – but will be a few billion short. That’s fine, it’s a conference speech not a Budget. All the major opposition parties came out the gate to oppose this – despite initial polling showing that this trade off is popular and fair.

Davey said that social care can’t wait for the next parliament – we need action now – which we all agree with. He also said it shouldn’t be funded by modifying the Triple Lock, which begs the question, can we afford the Triple Lock? The answer is yes for the next 10 or 15 years, but not as a low tax party.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged triple lock | 14 Comments

Let’s fix social care

By Joe Wright | Thu 30th July 2026 - 1:16 pm

Andy Burnham has rightly made fixing social care a top priority and seems, on the face of it, to be genuinely interested in reaching a cross party consensus. Social care has been a priority for Liberal Democrats for a long time as well – I shed more than one or two tears when I first saw some of our election broadcasts from Ed Davey talking about his experiences.

The good news is that we don’t need to wait for the Casey Review to conclude in several years – the answers are already out there. In 2019, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee published a landmark report calling for £8bn investment in social care, followed by the introduction of free personal care in England. The committee at the time was chaired by the very right-wing Lord Forsyth – this is not a lefty fringe idea, but one that makes practical sense.

It was wisely adopted as our party’s policy in 2023 and a major plank of our manifesto in 2024.

Of course, post-Covid and an ever aging population would mean you need more than £8bn today – some estimates as much as £18bn for transformative social care by 2036.

Frankly, Liberal Democrats need to be a bit less squeamish about asking people to pay more tax. Real substantial taxes rather than fiddling with the Digital Services Tax which is paying for seemingly everything (incidentally widening its base to cover more products like user data sales and streaming services as France and Denmark do or expanding it to AI companies would generate substantially more revenue than upping the headline rate).

The main beneficiaries of making personal care free are people like my family – a fair amount of wealth and assets (a 3 bed detached house in Berkshire and investments) but not necessarily cash rich. The fairest solution is to look at taxing wealth more, rather than working people during a cost of living crisis, so the main beneficiaries are the main contributors. Equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax, and removing some of the egregious loopholes would raise upwards of £11.3bn a year as well as removing distortions which would promote economic growth. It is also backed by the IFS.