Further thoughts on Winter Fuel Payment withdrawal
Trying to increase pension credit take up will overload DWP capability and claims will not be handled in time for November: The drive to increase take up won’t work and will still leave millions out. With hundreds of thousands of pensioners potentially eligible for Pension Credit but not yet claiming and perhaps up to 2 million more with incomes only a little above the threshold who might now try to apply and find themselves rejected, it is inevitable that the Government will be unable to process all new claims within a few weeks. Even if those applying are accepted, the administrative processes take weeks or months so they won’t get their payments on time.
What will happen to those whose claims are rejected as being a bit above the threshold? And those who are on low incomes but rejected as just a bit above the cut-off point, won’t get any help at all. AgeUK estimate there are about 2 million of them. They also won’t get the help that those on Pension Credit receive with council tax, housing benefits, dental treatment, cold weather payments and so on. They will be even poorer than those on Pension Credit and therefore at greater risk.
Poorer pensioners usually have no way of suddenly finding extra money when they can’t or won’t go into debt: Pensioners don’t have these sums stashed behind their sofa and they are not likely to be able to borrow money or use credit cards to pay their fuel bills. How are they supposed to manage?
Punishing all pensioners because some are well off is not the way to run social policy: Just because some pensioners are well off is no justification for punishing the poorer ones as well.
Government should urgently announce a delay to allow time for proper assessment: At the very least this decision should be delayed to give time for the government to make proper assessments of the potential hardship and work out mitigations carefully. It is only fair to warn people and also to decide how to properly target help that is vital to so many properly.
Many pensioners spend most of their time at home and have already tried to cut spending: Those pensioners I am most worried about are those who have already cut their spending to the bone, who live in energy inefficient homes, who spend most of their time at home, and have no way of replacing this lost money as energy bills rise. All they can do is turn down or turn off the heating.
Those of us living comfortably in Britain forget about the reality of life for so many proud but frail older citizens: These pensioners have grown up making do with what they have and never wanting to be in debt. Those in their 80s and 90s have suddenly had £300 snatched away from them without warning. Obviously this is causing real distress.
The Government must put this decision on hold pending a proper impact assessment and mitigation measures.
2 thoughts on “Further thoughts on Winter Fuel Payment withdrawal”
You are a great ambassador Ros
This government attacks those who can’t fight back, by withdrawing their labour, because they have no leverage. Yet it’s many like myself and my wife who have already worked for over 55 years and yet, out of fear, continue to work into our seventies to try and maintain any sort of lifestyle other than sitting at home all day.
Perhaps all pensioners should form their own union and refuse to pay council tax – which again we have been paying for decades.
I think there should be a new slogan entitled RR standing for Robbing Rachel who claimed over £3500 over the iast 5 years to heat a second home