Winter Fuel Payment

Debate between Edward Argar and Luke Myer

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.