MP warns that pensioners are deeply concerned about cuts to their winter fuel allowance

Pensioners are “worried sick” that they won’t be able to heat their homes this year, parliamentarians have been told ahead of a Commons vote on winter fuel allowance.

Starting this year, older individuals in England and Wales who do not receive pension credit or certain other means-tested benefits will no longer get winter fuel payments.

The reduction in winter fuel allowance will impact about five out of six retirees living below the poverty line who will miss out on assistance with their winter fuel bills.

Concerned policymakers addressed Commons leader Lucy Powell at business questions on Thursday regarding the impact this will have on their constituents.

Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse expressed that with energy bills expected to rise this winter, many pensioners in Bath are “worried sick that they will not be able to heat their homes.”

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“Insulating homes and pension rises must come before we cut the winter allowance. I hope the government will really listen to our side of the argument,” she told MPs.

Following a debate on the changes, the House of Commons will take a vote on Sept. 10.

Powell said that the government wasn’t “afraid” to debate the cuts in Parliament.Since entering Downing Street in July, Labour has said that its predecessors have left the government with a £22 billion budget hole.

“The legacy they have left us means we have had to make some really difficult decisions, decisions we did not want to make, like means testing the winter fuel payment.

“But we are doing all we can to support pensioners this winter: protecting the triple lock, which has seen the state pension go up by £900 this year and likely to rise by several hundred pounds next year; the Warm Home Discount worth £150; extending the Household Support Fund; and a huge campaign to get eligible pensioners onto Pension Credit,” Powell told MPs on Thursday.

Paying the Price

The upcoming vote was welcomed by the shadow Commons leader Chris Philp, who said that some of his Croydon South constituents are “desperate with worry” at the proposed changes.

Philp told the House that an older constituent had told him: “The allowance meant I could turn the heating on. Now I fear hypothermia during the coming winter months.”

Another Conservative MP, Caroline Johnson, said she was concerned that Labour’s policy will lead to the unnecessary ill health and death of elderly people.

While the Liberal Democrats acknowledge the challenging state of public finances, Hobhouse told the House that pensioners “should not be paying the price of Conservative incompetence.”

Tough Decision

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has defended the policy and told MPs on Wednesday that it was a “tough decision” required to “stabilise our economy.”

He also said that Labour will “align housing benefit and pension credit” and reiterated the government’s commitment to the triple lock. The policy guarantees the state pension will rise by inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5 percent.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said that the government needs to be fiscally responsible in the light of the inherited “absolute mess” of state finances.

“But we were very clear in the run-up to the general election, we wouldn’t play fast and loose with the country’s finances because that’s what the Tories did, and that’s why we’re in this mess in the first place, and that we will do everything we can to grow our economy,“ she told ”BBC Breakfast.”

Charity Age UK has criticized the decision to cut the winter fuel allowance, describing it as “reckless and wrong.”

The decision came with “virtually no notice and no compensatory measures to protect poor and vulnerable pensioners,” the charity said in a statement. It has also launched a petition calling for the government to halt their proposed change and “think again.”

PA Media contributed to this report.