Millions of pensioners to lose winter fuel allowance under Labour!

 

Labour Chancellor - Rachel Reeves

Britain's state pensioners are likely to become far worse off under Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party. In opposition, Labour said that it would protect pensioners from the cost-of-living crisis and ensure that older people had security in retirement.

Earlier this month, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for levelling up, said that Labour would "extend protections against damp, mould and cold." However, Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has just announced that from this year onwards, state pensioners will no longer automatically get the winter fuel allowance to help with paying their fuel bills. She said that only people on Pension Credit and other means tested benefits will now qualify. More than one in three pensioners who are entitled to pension credit, don't receive it.

In the long-run, is the 'triple-lock' safe under Labour? I doubt it. Winter Fuel Payments were introduced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1997, to help older people meet the costs of heating their homes in winter and to end fuel poverty.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC), have claimed that over 1,000 people died in England in December 2022, as a result of living in cold damp homes. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 43,500 excess winter deaths (EWDs) (defined as the number of deaths that occurred in the winter period minus the expected number of deaths for that period based on non-winter months), occurred in England and Wales 2014/15 and these deaths were concentrated among older people.

In removing winter fuel payments for most UK state pensioners, we're going to see more elderly people dying of hypothermia in their homes because they will struggle to pay their fuel bills. Labour's Rachel Reeves may well be engaging in 'gerineglicide'.