Winter Fuel Payment

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are planning to take to change the entitlement to the Winter Fuel Payment.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are extending eligibility so that this winter, all pensioners with incomes up to and including £35,000 will benefit from the winter fuel payment. That means 9 million pensioners will now receive it—more than three-quarters of pensioners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, since tabling this Question, we have had 40 minutes of exchanges on Tuesday. In fairness to the Minister, he addressed most of the questions, albeit at times provocatively. However, he did not answer the question from my noble friend Lord Hailsham, who asked why, when the Government needed to save money on the winter fuel allowance, they did not simply abolish it and then increase in November each individual’s entitlement to the state retirement pension by the same amount and recover it through the tax system. The Minister said:

“That may be one option, but it is not the option we have chosen”.—[Official Report, 10/6/25; col. 1224.]


Would that not have been simpler?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for the question. We have to remember the circumstances in which we found ourselves back in the autumn. We had to take many difficult and urgent decisions, because we needed to find in-year savings due to the £22 billion black hole in the public finances that we inherited. We had to come in and make urgent in-year decisions. We therefore had to put in place a system that was able to generate immediate savings. The system that the noble Lord describes was not able to generate those immediate savings. That is why we did what we did. We are now able to extend eligibility, as I have said. We are extending it so that this winter, all pensioners with incomes up to and including £35,000 will benefit from the winter fuel payment.