Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I speak in broad support of the regret Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I appreciate the very tight fiscal constraints under which the Government are having to operate, and the need for tough choices to be made. I also accept the recent Statement by the Prime Minister that tough choices are almost by definition unpopular choices. Tough choices must also be wise choices, however, and I confess that I harbour misgivings about the wisdom of this proposal for two reasons.

First, as others have observed, I worry about the speed at which these regulations have been laid, given the likely impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. There has been no careful assessment of this impact, which is bound to be exacerbated by the fact that the energy price cap has just been lifted, meaning that this winter many pensioners will face increased fuel tariffs precisely when they are bound to incur increased fuel consumption, and just when a relief that they previously enjoyed has been withdrawn.

Secondly, I wonder whether the threshold for continued receipt of winter fuel payments is the right one. I understand that pinning continued payments to pension credits will make it straightforward to administer and, given the speed with which the Government feel that they need to act, I appreciate the appeal of this simple solution. However, I doubt that in this situation a simple solution is the best solution. All Members of this House recognise that many either do not claim pension credits to which they are entitled or are marginally ineligible for those credits and will inevitably experience considerable additional hardship on account of these regulations.

I am grateful to the Minister for the encouragement she has been giving this week to all those who are entitled to pension credits to apply for them, and I assure her that I shall do everything I can to communicate that message across South Yorkshire and the East Riding. However, I ask her, in a constructive spirit, whether the Government are confident that they have calibrated with sufficient care the eligibility bar for continued receipt of winter fuel payments. Will the Government not consider again the possibility that the bar has been set too low?

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott on the Front Bench, and I have sat here thinking, “How did we come to this?”—a first-world country that could treat our pensioners so badly. How could we sit here and have a debate about taking away really needed money from the elderly and most vulnerable people in our communities? Today is quite a cold day; it suddenly went cold, and I am feeling it, and I am pretty certain that most pensioners in their households will be thinking, “Should I switch the heating on or leave it off?”

I speak on behalf of the 10,207 pensioners in the city of Leicester who are now not going to receive this payment. I feel sad, but also ashamed that we are standing here debating a very small saving in the bigger scheme of things. I do not understand it—I do not get it—because I felt that we were a country that looked after the most vulnerable. I felt that we were this gold standard that people looked at, and that we were able to say that we protect those who cannot protect themselves. Yet here we are, quite happy to debate £1.4 billion. I am not going to challenge the public sector workers’ pay award; I just want to focus long and hard on why we are sitting here thinking that we have no hope in changing the Government’s mind. If the Government really want to help, they need to take this ridiculous notion back and rethink. If the Government want to save £1.4 billion there are plenty of other ways of doing it, and I urge the Government to use them.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I, and I think many colleagues in the House, were surprised when this measure was selected to save money. We understand why Governments have to save money from time to time; we seem to have forgotten that we spent our way out of the Covid crisis, which has contributed very substantially to the debts this nation has and which the next generation will be paying back—and maybe their children as well. The Labour Party has just won a very convincing election victory, and while I understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and indeed what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said with regard to challenging this measure, I personally do not think it is appropriate for us to challenge a newly elected Government at this stage, even though this measure was not in their manifesto and must have been clearly in their mind before the election—they did not just invent it on 4 July.

However, this idea is bonkers. It is not going to save £1.4 billion and, as the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, said, it will probably increase the number of people who will have to engage in health service requirements. If we manage to increase the take-up of pension credits, that is well and good, but that will also take away from the £1.4 billion saving. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, a very highly respected committee in this House, has rarely produced a more depressing commentary than that on how the Government have dealt with this.

I would also like to localise the impact of this measure. The noble Lord, Lord McCrea, made a point about how my own region in Northern Ireland will be affected. We have 306,000 households that get the allowance, but that number will be reduced to 57,000, plus whatever additional pension credit is claimed. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, made a forensic assessment of these proposals, but we all know that that is going to be at the margins; no matter how we push these things, there are a whole variety of reasons why we cannot achieve them. Nevertheless, of all the issues that we could look at to save money, this is the last area at which we should look. I just do not understand it. This is a poll tax moment for the Labour Party—it is on that scale, and it will last. It will not go away.

I can only suggest to the Government what I think has happened: they have got themselves on to the hook, and for tough-guy leadership reasons the Prime Minister does not want to be seen to be backing off —blah, blah, blah. The Government forced their MPs into the Lobby or sent them off with a slip for the day. They said, “Get out of the way, do not vote against us”, et cetera. I understand all that.

However, I think that we all would respect and acknowledge a Government that said, “Okay, perhaps we haven’t gone about this the right way. We will find other savings, but we will start a consultation process as we normally would, through the system, and see what we can come up with”. We all know that many of us in this House get the benefit, and we do not need it. So, tax it, or do whatever you like—the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, is an accountant and he knows these things—but, whatever can be done, let us do it. “Please”, we must say again to the Government, “this is bonkers”.