Emma Lewell MP: The debacle around winter fuel payments should be a lesson for our Government
Last year, when the Government announced means-testing of the winter fuel payment, I immediately raised my objections. I found it an unconscionable decision, against a backdrop of 1.28m pensioner households suffering from fuel poverty and in the winter of 2023, nearly 5,000 older people dying directly from living in cold homes.
I found it an unconscionable decision, against a backdrop of 1.28 million pensioner households suffering from fuel poverty and in the winter of 2023, nearly 5,000 older people dying directly from living in cold homes.
As promised, I have continued to do all I can so that the pensioners who rely on this payment continued to get it. They should never have been the ones to pay the price for the economic mess our country was left in by the Tories.
In September, my party’s Whip in Parliament was to vote for these proposals. I attended the House of Commons chamber, and I defied the Whip. I simply could not vote in favour of legislation that proposed to remove the payments for many vulnerable pensioners in my constituency. Nor could I vote against it being removed from the wealthiest. Means-testing the payment meant that 15,200 pensioners on modest incomes in South Shields would no longer receive the payment.
This was a terrible policy, poorly designed and motivated solely by rigid fiscal intentions rather than social need. The Government’s decision to reconsider the threshold, is a welcome move. The new threshold states that any pensioner with a taxable income of less than £35,000 is now eligible to receive the payment.
It will take time to rebuild trust with the public that we have lost because of this policy. A good place to start would be to scrap the proposed changes to Personal Independence Payments. History shows us that when the Tories restricted eligibility for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions, it did not increase employment levels or make any of the savings that the-then Government predicted. Instead, poverty soared, welfare spending increased and approximately 600 people took their own lives.
The debacle around winter fuel payments should be a lesson for our Government. When MPs and their constituents are clearly saying a policy is a mistake, they must listen. I am pleased on this occasion that they have.