Winter Fuel Payment

Edward Argar Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

This afternoon, we have heard some fantastic speeches in which Members have set out heartbreaking real-life stories from their constituents about the situation older people have found themselves in this winter. Pensioners have been forced to choose between eating and heating as a result of the Government’s choice to remove the winter fuel allowance from around 10 million of them. That was compounded by shocking delays in processing pension credit claims. Along with those who have just missed the threshold to receive support, it has meant that many, many people who are desperately in need have missed out on hundreds of pounds that would have made a real difference to them this winter.

As has previously been said:

“Although the poorest do receive some help through cold weather payments, they go only to those on income support, who generally have to wait until after the cold weather for help to be available. The payments are no help at all to most pensioners, including…those on the margins of poverty”.

The individual continues that they were

“simply not prepared to allow another winter to go by when pensioners are fearful of turning up their heating, even on the coldest winter days, because they do not know whether they will have the help they need for their fuel bills.”—[Official Report, 25 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 779-80.]

Those were the words of the former Labour Chancellor and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who brought in the winter fuel payment. It is a great shame that his successors in a Labour Government today have taken a very different view on support for pensioners.

The choice made by the Labour Government—almost their first choice in office last July—is as cruel as it is unnecessary, and it has real-life consequences for vulnerable people. Like many other Members, I suspect on both sides of the House, I have met my local branch of Age UK and other local charities. They all tell me about how hard their services—services vitally important to pensioners, such as GPs, hospices and pharmacies—will be hit by the Government’s jobs tax, the NICs hike. Alongside that impact on services pensioners rely on, this Government have slashed the winter fuel payment for so many. Understandably, pensioners are asking what the Labour party has against them—or, for that matter, against farmers or businesses.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

Let me just complete the point. I know that the hon. Gentleman has only come into the debate relatively late, but I will take an intervention from him afterwards.

The message is, under this Government, do not run a hospice, a pharmacy or a care home. Do not be a farmer. Do not run a business and, heaven forbid, do not get old.

[Jonathan Davies]

We on the Government Benches are disappointed to have had to make this decision, but it is a symptom of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I just remind the shadow Minister of something. I understand that he stood in the 2017 general election. Some of the policies in the Conservative manifesto at that time were to means-test the winter fuel allowance and to reduce the triple lock to a double lock.

[Edward Argar]

I will make a number of points to the hon. Gentleman. I was going to come on to his first point, but I will happily do so now. He seems to be alluding to the mythical so-called black hole that is so often bandied around. The OBR pointedly declined to validate that or back it up in its assessment, and it cannot be deemed a rationale for doing this.

[Luke Myer]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I want to make a little progress.

We have seen a real black hole emerging following the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s disastrous Budget. It is also not the case that the Government can claim they have saved the pensions triple lock, which was introduced by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government back in 2010. The previous Government had already committed themselves to it, in that election’s manifesto and others. Pensioners could rightly bank on the uplift from the triple lock coming through. What they have seen now, however, is a real cut in what they were receiving, and what they had a right to expect, with the slashing of the winter fuel payment.

[Luke Myer]

The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the OBR. I wonder whether he has read the report in which it states:

“The Treasury did not share information with the OBR about the large pressures on RDEL”

— resource departmental expenditure limits—

“about the unusual extent of commitments against the reserve, or about any plans to manage these pressures down”.

I wonder whether he will take this opportunity to apologise for that extraordinary fiscal failure.

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, as I mentioned earlier, I have read the report, and he will know, having also read it—he is gently waving it at me from the other side of the Chamber—that the OBR pointedly declined to back up the claim about the so-called £22 billion black hole.

As we have heard, the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, initiated the winter fuel allowance, announcing it in 1997 and introducing it in 1998; but it is worth remembering that, even in the challenging circumstances of the time, George Osborne did not cut the allowance, despite the appalling financial and economic inheritance in 2010. Why not? Because it was a cost-effective benefit, and because it genuinely made a difference.

[Mark Ferguson]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Edward Argar]

Let me just make a further point. I am about to deal with some of the hon. Gentleman’s own points, as he will find if he pauses for a minute, but he may want to intervene at that moment.

George Osborne did not cut the winter fuel allowance because it gave pensioners the confidence to turn the heating up those extra few degrees, knowing that the money was coming. I will now give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mark Ferguson]

I salute the right hon. Gentleman’s quest for clarity. Will he provide others with that clarity? Would his party reverse this policy?

[Edward Argar]

I was about to be quite nice to the hon. Gentleman, because I have to say that, during a debate that has, perhaps, produced a lot of heat and not always a huge amount of light, he addressed the issues before us in a measured way. I did not agree with everything he said, but he was reasonable and made some valid points. Let me gently say to him, however, that our record speaks for itself. We did not get rid of the winter fuel allowance. The fact is that Labour Members are in government, and have a large majority, and, as they are discovering, to govern is to choose. They must be accountable for the choice—the choice—that they have made.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Edward Argar]

I will make a little bit of progress, and then I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

UK pensioners are not fools, so I am sorry that Labour Members want almost to insult their intelligence by repeating the debunked claim about the so-called black hole, or the debunked claim that the triple lock was in some way under threat and has been saved by the current Government. Let me also gently remind them that pensioners are unlikely to forget. They feel let down by Labour; they feel that the trust that they placed in Labour Members when they voted for them has been betrayed, and within a month of Labour’s taking office. So I ask again, why did this Government make the political choice to introduce these cruel, unnecessary cuts?

I now give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

The moment may have passed somewhat, but I think my point is still apposite enough to make. If there are any apologies to go round, they should come from the Labour party. In every single election campaign in which I have been involved for at least the past 25 years, the Labour party has run a scare story about the Conservatives scrapping the winter fuel payment, and the moment they get into office, what is the very first thing they do? They remove the winter fuel payment. That is what has upset so many of my constituents so much.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the former Deputy Prime Minister, who has put the case far more eloquently and succinctly than I could have done. He is, of course, entirely right.

An estimated three quarters of a million people are entitled to pension credit, but do not claim it, even after Labour’s pension credit take-up campaign, so they did not receive the winter fuel payment to which they are entitled. Will the Minister—or the Pensions Minister who opened this debate, whom I see back in his place—commit in the name of transparency to publish an official estimate of the number of eligible pensioners the Government estimate did not receive the winter fuel payment this winter? I am conscious of the time, so I will allow the Minister to respond in his wind-up.

The Government’s own modelling shows that 100,000 pensioners will be pushed into poverty as a result of their choices. Now that the first winter has passed, will the Minister commit to publishing data showing the real impact of changes to the winter fuel payment on levels of pensioner poverty? The number of over-65s attending A&E increased by nearly 100,000 this winter, despite its being a warmer winter than average. We know that multiple factors have an impact on that number, but this is a very large jump. Again, will Ministers publish official data on the number of hospital admissions they believe to be caused by the winter fuel payment cut and what the cost to the NHS has been?

To conclude, because I am conscious of the time and wish to enable the Minister to respond, this money was genuinely needed by vulnerable people—vulnerable pensioners—this winter. In my Melton and Syston constituency, I get heartrending messages about choices between eating and heating, and we should not forget, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) mentioned, the impact on rural communities reliant on heating oil and having to pay for that in one bulk payment.

Labour Members have an opportunity this evening to send a message to pensioners. Will that message once again be one of ignoring their concerns, with the Government showing they are deaf to them and do not care, or will they take the opportunity to do the right thing this evening, and back our motion to send the message to their older constituents that they do care and are standing up for them against this cruel and unnecessary cut? This choice, and it is a choice, will tell pensioners in their constituencies exactly where they stand. The Conservatives and other Members on this side of the House are standing up for our pensioners on winter fuel payments. The Conservatives are backing the generation that gave so much to our country. Will Members on the Government Benches have the courage to do the same?