Winter Fuel Payment

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Mid Norfolk is a profoundly rural constituency, with 130 villages and four towns, and in that very rural constituency, as with all rural areas in this country, people are paying a surcharge because of energy costs and because of rurality. There will be colder weather, and many of my houses are not on the gas grid, while rural areas traditionally have lower incomes and we have an elderly population.

The Treasury, very helpfully—it is a shame Ministers did not read it—did a piece of work last year looking at the risks of rural poverty and the higher risk of rural areas falling into real poverty. The Treasury’s own figures showed that the average household at risk of poverty in rural areas needs an extra £800; or in layman’s terms, there is a two and a half times—or 250%—higher risk of rural houses falling into rural poverty. So I find it completely extraordinary that Labour, which in government professes to care about poverty and berated my party when in government about the risks of rural poverty and of pensioner poverty, has decided as their first act to punish people in rural areas.

It is because of those rural risks that, earlier this year, I and a number of colleagues set up a fair funding alliance, supported by Action with Communities in Rural England, the Countryside Alliance and rural bodies. Higher fuel and energy prices are hitting rural areas, and we would have hoped that this Government might have listened. I am proud that the Conservative party in government upgraded pensions, protected the triple lock and took 200,000 pensioners out of poverty.

[Ben Maguire]

The former Member for Thornbury and Yate introduced the triple lock, which was actually a Liberal Democrat policy. Would the hon. Member care to correct the record on that point?

[George Freeman]

It was my good friend the now noble Lord Willetts in a coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats, and I will happily debate with the hon. Member some of the brave decisions we took.

The point is that this party, the Conservative party, protected pensioners, protected the triple lock and lifted 200,000 people out of poverty, but we see this Labour Government make this decision. The Minister put it very clearly earlier. This is an attack on people who own their own homes, people who have retired in rural areas and those just over the threshold, and in Labour world they are millionaires. This will not be forgotten by people in my constituency, the low-income rural pensioners who have saved up to be able to afford their own home and are now being clobbered. It is unfair, it is unjust, it is unjustifiable, it is unprecedented, and I urge and beg Ministers to think again.