I have read the various posts about Andy Burnham’s proposals for social care and the proposed implication for the pensions triple-lock. After some decades of involvement on both issues, I thought my perspective and experience might have some relevance.

I was closely involved in the review of pensions including the Turner Review of 2006 and the resultant settlement, leading on to the triple lock in the coalition Government. I was also much engaged in the debate about social care from the campaign which led to the Sutherland Commission, then working with proponents of both majority and minority views on the Commission.  I worked with Labour Ministers throughout the 2000s in trying to devise and get agreement (crucially from Treasury and No 10) on a reform package for social care and then helped Paul Burstow as Social Care Minister to set up the Dilnot Commission. On social care, it has been a record of failure which reflects the difficulty of achieving  a satisfactory outcome.

The two key problems were and remain (1) financial and (2) political. The issue is NOT the detailed structure and operation of the care system; around the world, there is a good deal of experience of the options.  The challenge is political consent which depends on money and particularly the long-term costs of a commitment to meet needs. Governments around the world are trying and usually failing to establish a system which is both effective and involves a generally acceptable level of tax. However, the numbers involved are improving as a result of the entirely unexpected decline worldwide in the incidence of dementias associated with old age.

Apart from a brief period during Gordon Brown’s premiership, this is the first time in 30 years when there has been a strong and explicit commitment by a Prime Minister to ensure a care system that delivers.

With both pensions and social care (and a few other policy areas such as defence), a key underlying principle is settlement, which I promoted in both areas with some success. That is, a broad political agreement across political parties and civil society about a medium to long-term plan which enables people to plan for their future with confidence, such as those which followed from the 1910 budget and the Beveridge reforms. The idea of “social contract” underpins the approach.

Such a settlement involves trade-offs and widespread debate, preferably accompanied by enough goodwill and commitment to reach a shared outcome. Regrettably, experience suggests that the nearer a General Election, the harder that is to achieve. Even if a pre-election agreement is impossible to achieve, there should be enough basis for accepting and building on what is put in place to give reasonable assurance that it will continue. Given the difficulty of devising and implementing the reforms, it can reasonably be hoped that will happen.

That is why it is important that the Liberal Democrats commit to the process, to considering the political and economic trade-offs that are required, and supporting what emerges, even if it also commits to building from that base in future.

It is important to keep remembering the sheer extent of human misery that follows from the continuing failure to agree and implement a fair, wide-ranging settlement to support people at the time of their greatest need.

* Gordon Lishman CBE was Operations Director and Chief Executive of Age Concern and International Vice-President of the International Federation on Ageing. He has been a Liberal and Liberal Democrat activist at parish, local, regional, national and international levels for 63 years.