Winter Fuel Payment

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Livermore

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

UK Border Strategy: Single Trade Window

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Livermore

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I agreed very much with the beginning of the noble Lord’s question but less as he progressed. He is absolutely right that the measures he proposes would eliminate those challenges and I pay tribute to him for consistently advocating a pro-European case. We are committed to resetting our relationship with the EU. It is our biggest trading partner. As I said, the Prime Minister was the first Prime Minister since Brexit to have attended a meeting of the EU Council and the Chancellor was the first Chancellor since Brexit to have attended a meeting of the Eurogroup of EU Finance Ministers. We are ambitious to reset that relationship and we will continue to move forward at pace.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to the original Question, can the Minister explain why it would cost the Government quite so much to introduce this window?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

There are costs from designing, developing and administering the technical delivery platform, which have been clearly set out by Deloitte, with support from IBM. We have retained the technical platform in order to retain the option for a future restart of the project. This would allow us to capitalise on the previous investment and could enable a simpler and faster restart of development activity in the future. As I say, we will update the House at the next spending review.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Livermore

Committee stage
Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, I am grateful for what he said. Can he confirm that he has not ruled out amending the draft memorandum of understanding in the way that I proposed?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I would like to be helpful to the noble Lord. I am told that the memorandum of understanding deals exclusively with borrowing powers, so it may not be the most appropriate vehicle to insert that into.