Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister on her appointment and I declare an interest as a beneficiary myself hitherto of the winter fuel payment—but only in very recent years. Indeed, I wonder whether your Lordships’ House should not pass a resolution declaring a corporate interest. Members of this House are unlikely to be seriously affected by the measure. That is not the point. For many pensioners in my diocese and for considerably larger numbers, possibly extending to millions, across the country, this will be a significant financial hit, with adverse repercussions this coming winter.

As has been alluded to, the origin of the Chancellor’s decision to cut winter fuel payments lies in her view of the state of public finances. It is not a manifesto commitment. The Minister, for whom I have enormous respect, has appealed to the House to neither annul the regulations nor express regret, but I suspect that there are those on the Government Benches who are internalising their regret at this very moment. I fear, and I think this feeling is shared across the House, that the Government’s decision on this matter will define them in the public mind for years to come. It is a signal gesture on their part and one that I believe should be resisted, notwithstanding the Minister’s careful appeal.

First, all Governments should take scrupulous care with our public finances, and it is true that the national debt is now at a level not seen since the early 1960s. But a third of our national debt is owned by the Government themselves through the exercise known as quantitative easing. Secondly, deficit financing, investment, growth and reductions in debt went hand in hand in the decades following the Second World War. Thirdly, the principle of universality in public benefits, as here, is one that is being steadily eroded.

The advantage of a universal benefit is simplicity in administration, the certainty of application and the absence of a social stigma. Means-tested benefits attract doubtless unintended stigmatisation, with a burden to both applicant and state in terms of administration and, inevitably, a failure by those eligible to take up the benefit. Despite the sharp increase in those applying for pension credit, it remains the case that a significant number of people eligible for the credit have not applied for it and would not wish to seek special treatment, as they see it, by so doing.

The Beveridge report in 1942, at a time of desperate stress, identified five giants that needed to be slain on the road to reconstruction: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. The prescription for their demise was universal, as had been all the great reforms of the previous century, from public parks to museums and galleries, free lending libraries, open-air concerts, healthcare, pensions and unemployment benefit. Those principles were extended after 1945.

The prescriptions in more recent years have been of restricted access, increased commodification and means testing. Of these, means testing is always the costliest option. They have accompanied low growth, increased inequality and an atrophy of positive outcomes. After a wide consultation, the proposal suggested by other Members to make the payment a taxable benefit clearly has much to commend it.

I shall listen to your Lordships with care, but I am minded to vote for the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, if not for that of the noble Baroness, Lady Altman.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I entirely understand why the Government want to get rid of a fuel payment to many people who can afford to deal with even the heightened cost of fuel for heating, but I make no apology for repeating what others have said, because it seems to me that it has to come from right across the House in order for—just possibly—the Minister and therefore the Government to listen to what we are saying. I do not think, from what I heard happened in the Commons yesterday—although I was not in this country—that there is more than a faint hope of that, but it is so important that we should be saying this from across the House.

We know that those eligible for universal credit do not always take it; we have been told that. But we also know of a large number of people who have an income just above universal credit and that is the group about whom I am most concerned when it comes to an increase in heating costs. The triple-lock pension increase does not come until April, but the heating cost is coming now. These people are going to suffer this year and I find it inconceivable that a Labour Government who have done so much for this country in so many ways should put themselves behind depriving ordinary, elderly people—and I speak as a very elderly person—of the opportunity to not have to choose between eating or heating. This seems to me the saddest thing I could possibly think of.

It may be a short-term problem in the sense that the triple-lock payment may help for next year, but, having heard what other speakers have said today in your Lordships’ House, that seems to me unlikely and it does seem that we will need a fuel payment for those on universal credit and those not on universal credit but earning very little more. I absolutely beg the Government to think again.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I commend my erstwhile noble friend the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on her powerful opening of this debate. I agree with the arguments she put forward, as well as those of my noble friend on the Front Bench. There is very little for me to add to what they have already said about this decision that the Government have made and for which they have no mandate. They have not even had the respect to set out a proposal in a Budget in a much more rounded way, as put forward by my noble friend Lady Altmann.

I want to make a bigger point. What a lot of people find quite hard to take at the moment is that, alongside this decision, the Prime Minister has the gall to say that his Government are acting in a way which will restore public trust. He seems not to understand that all of us in the political class over the last few years have lost public trust—himself included—because of our disregard and disrespect for what the electorate have been demanding from us. For this Government now to take decisions that affect people so directly without any notice—believing that such decisions can be justified because the Prime Minister and his Chancellor are convinced that they know best—damages public trust further.

Of course, the impact of this politically on the Labour Party is a matter for it, but I urge the Minister and the rest of her Government to accept the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Altmann today. I hope that she does not mind me calling her my noble friend; she will always be “my noble friend” to me.