A U-turn on pensioner Winter Fuel Payments is a bit of light perhaps but no actual heat
A U-turn of sorts but scant comfort for most pensioners.
Today’s announcement at PMQs that the Prime Minister now wants ‘to ensure that, as we go forward, more pensioners are eligible for the Winter Fuel Payment’ gives no detail, no timescale and is just an aspiration that will depend on it being ‘affordable’.
This still leaves millions of pensioners, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet and wondering whether they will get any help.
I’m pleased if there is at last some recognition of just how dreadfully damaging this decision was. With almost no notice, millions of pensioners were suddenly stripped of hundreds of pounds, which many had been relying on to help meet rising winter energy bills. No proper impact assessment was carried out and these payments were not uncosted spending commitments. They were baked into the DWP budget forecasts.
I did try to get the House of Lords to block this terrible policy decision but at the time, Parliamentarians were clearly not in a mood to disobey three-line Whips. However, having suffered significant defeats by voters in recent elections, and reports that Winter Fuel Payments featured heavily on the doorstep, perhaps Ministers have realised the error of their ways.
The costs of administering the Pension Credit and ongoing low take-up has probably caught Ministers by surprise. But they also did not factor in the extra NHS costs of more pensioners, who were unable to keep warm enough, becoming ill, calling on their GPs, visiting A&E and being stuck in hospitals awaiting discharge which is often delayed by ongoing social care strains.
Pensioners have greater needs for winter heating and often have more energy inefficient homes. So many were already struggling to keep their homes warm or cook a hot meal in past winters.
Despite today’s news, pensioners still don’t know who is eligbile nor how or when they may receive help.
We do not know what is now under consideration but there were always other money-saving options that would have been less cruel and fairer than restricting payments only to those eligible for Pension Credit.
One option would be taxing the payments, rather than axing them. Or only taking the money away from those paying higher rate tax, like the restrictions on Child Benefit. At the very least, eligibility should have been much wider to protect poorer pensioners – those who are eligible but not receiving Pension Credit, and those just above the extremely low means-test cut off.
Pension Credit helps single pensioners living on under £227.10 a week or £346.60 for a couple and tops them up to those levels. It gives over £50 a week additional income and, on average, entitles recipients to over £75 a week in extra benefits such as for housing, health, cold weather and, of course, the Winter Fuel Payment.
Millions of pensioners, with incomes only slightly above the Pension Credit cut-off, have lost their winter heating help. Although under 200,000 applications have been approved, around 100,000 were rejected in the first few months. Many of the poorest pensioners, who dont quite qualify for Pension Credit, can miss out on an average £3900 a year in additional benefits but now also the Winter Fuel money too.
I hope Ministers will ensure all lower income pensioners wont suffer another winter of hardship and health harms because they can’t afford to heat their homes.
We need an urgent decision on how this U-turn will be implemented. There are options that could still cost less than completely tax free universal payments; restricting payments to basic rate or non-taxpayers only, along the lines of Child Benefit, or increasing the qualification threshold and aligning it with other means tested benefits, or increasing state pensions to encompass extra money for winter fuel are all options that would be fairer and less damaging. i hope the Government will act quickly.