Winter Fuel Payment

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House regrets that the Government approved the use of the urgency exemption in section 173 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 to make and lay the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 before the Secretary of State had referred the Regulations to the Social Security Advisory Committee; further regrets that the Government decided it was not necessary to publish an impact assessment for the Regulations, despite, for example, the evidence which shows that living in a cold home increases the risk of serious illness for vulnerable people and those with disabilities and so restricting eligibility for the Winter Fuel Payment is likely to lead to increased burdens on the National Health Service; regrets that the Government made time to debate the prayer motion from the Official Opposition without the Social Security Advisory Committee’s Report, and Government response; and calls on the Government to lay those papers before Parliament without delay, and to publish a full regulatory and equality impact assessment for these Regulations.

The decision to remove winter fuel payments has come as a complete shock to millions of pensioners—pensioners on as little as £11,500 a year. We have had no adequate explanation as to why this measure is so urgent. We have had no explanation as to why the Government had to invoke the special emergency provisions that allow them to bypass the scrutiny of the Social Security Advisory Committee. We have had no explanation as to why no impact assessments were provided. This is a major policy change that will remove the entitlement for up to 10 million pensioners, including many who are already in poverty. It is a cut worth £7.5 billion over the course of this Parliament. Rushing such a policy through—without taking time to consider the impacts, ensure effective and fair implementation, and allow possible scrutiny—is impossible to justify. This is not the way to make good policy, and this is not good government.

It is worth considering the conclusions of one of the few bodies that have been afforded the opportunity to scrutinise these regulations. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the Lords has been damning in its criticism of the Government’s approach, and I refer the House to my remarks in the previous debate, when I quoted the Committee at some length. As the Committee points out, such measures would normally be subject to the SSAC’s consideration. That is an important part of the process for any legislation of this nature, as I know well from my time as Work and Pensions Secretary. Conveniently, Ministers have claimed that the measure is too urgent to wait for the SSAC’s scrutiny.

We understand that the SSAC is due to consider the measure tomorrow. Can the Minister commit to the House today that the SSAC’s report, and the Government statement responding to any recommendations, will be laid before Parliament before the regulations come into force next week? As the Lords Committee has pointed out, it would seem wholly inappropriate for the SSAC’s views to be taken into account only once the regulations are already in force. In the words of the Committee,

“It remains unclear what the practical impact of any statement might be on regulations which will have already come into effect.”

If the Government do not intend to provide us with the SSAC’s observations before the House rises on Thursday, why were Members asked to consider and vote on the prayer motion against the regulations today, before the SSAC has met?

The lack of any impact assessment means that we are severely hampered in our ability to scrutinise this measure. We were told in the explanatory memorandum that:

“A full Impact Assessment has not been prepared for this instrument because there is no significant new impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies.”

This seems a bold claim to make about a measure that removes hundreds of pounds of support from some of the most vulnerable elderly households in our country.

The guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is clear:

“For a vulnerable person, living in a cold home increases their chance of serious illness or death.”

It also notes that

“being housebound increases both the exposure to an underheated home and the cost of heating it.”

So can I ask the Minister on what basis it was concluded that there would be no significant impact from this policy on those charities and organisations that support elderly people or on the wider health and social care system? Will he now commit to the publication of a proper impact assessment?

The only basis for the urgency seems to be a claim that this measure is vital for public finances. We have even been subjected to the Leader of the House claiming that it was needed to avoid a run on the pound. I might ask the Minister to comment on that when he appears at the Dispatch Box. The only real relevance of a measure of this kind to the public finances is its impact on the Government’s fiscal rules. Those fiscal rules are based on levels of debt and borrowing at the end of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s fiscal forecast period in five years’ time. The rules that the Chancellor has claimed she will sign up to were already being met when the Government came into office, according to the OBR’s own forecasts.

The Government could have opted to bring this measure in next year, with greater time for scrutiny, better notice for pensioners, more time to drive up pension credit uptakes and perhaps time to consider whether there were much better ways of going about it. It would still have been a broken promise, and we on this side of the House would still have opposed it, but it would have been a much better way to make policy and it would still have delivered exactly the same savings at the end of the forecast period.

Ministers will claim that they needed to make immediate in-year savings, but that is based entirely on a black hole that they have confected themselves. The real reason this is being rushed is pure politics. The Government want to rush this measure through while they can try to blame it on their predecessors in order to avoid proper scrutiny. There is no need whatsoever for the haste with which this is being done.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend, like me, find it inexplicable that the Government should fail to go through the proper process when their own research suggested that thousands of people could die as a result of precisely this measure? That is something that the whole House should find deeply uncomfortable.

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point. This is a very serious step that the Government are taking. Of all the steps that should be properly scrutinised, surely this is one of them. I remember when I was sitting on the other side of the Chamber, I could barely breathe without the cry going out that an impact assessment should be held. It is extraordinary that on such an important measure as this, affecting millions of the most vulnerable, the Labour party should be utterly silent on this issue.

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[James Murray]

I would be interested to understand why the hon. Gentleman is backing a candidate to lead his party who supports the means-testing of the winter fuel payment. He might want to have a conversation with that candidate before he starts criticising our approach of targeting support at those in greatest need. The critical point is that the combination of the state pension rising under the triple lock with those in greatest need getting winter fuel payments alongside pension credit, not to mention the extension of the household support fund, means that the right measures are in place to give all pensioners the support they need.

Opposition Members want to know why the legislation is being progressed urgently. I will be really clear: it is urgent because we need to deal urgently with the £22 billion black hole—the huge in-year spending pressure—that we inherited from the Government that they ran. It is crucial that we act quickly to restore responsibility to our public finances and stability to our economy. On top of that, it was important that we made sure that regulations were in place at the start of the qualifying week for winter fuel payments, while wasting no time in doing all we can to raise pension credit take-up.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

We have heard that the Transport Minister yesterday could give no assurance to pensioners about their transport concessions. Last week, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister about the single person council tax discount. There is a very real prospect that pensioners could lose even more than £300—another £300 or £400. Will the Exchequer Secretary take this opportunity to reassure pensioners that there is no way that the Government will remove the single person discount from the council tax? It would be politically good for him and the Labour party, and it would be enormously important for people who need to hear some reassurance at this time.

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[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I was proud to be elected on a manifesto that committed to delivering economic stability, security and growth. After 14 years of Tory recklessness with our economy and after the disastrous Liz Truss mini-Budget drove up inflation, food bills and mortgage repayments and pushed my constituents to the brink, the public voted for change. That change must start with getting our economy back on its feet.

When the previous Labour Government left office, Trussell Trust food banks were giving out 40,000 food parcels a year. Last year they gave out 3 million. When we on the Labour side of the House talk about the recklessness of the previous Government, it is not academic. We are talking about taxpayers’ money being poured into ideological gimmicks while children are going to school hungry, working adults are one rent rise away from homelessness and a broken NHS is stalling productivity and failing those who most rely on public services, including our pensioners. We face a £22 billion black hole in the public finances that they covered up and walked away from.

Stability means bringing the economy and the country back from the brink to which the Conservative party knowingly pushed it. No one doubts that this policy is tough, and it is not a measure we want to take, but we have been left a huge bill to pay. Means-testing the winter fuel allowance will allow us to support those pensioners most in need as we take the difficult steps we have to take to right the ship.

Members across this House know that in our communities there are too many pensioners struggling. That is why I welcome this Government’s commitment to the triple lock, under which the state pension has risen by £900 this year and will rise by more than £450 in April. I also support the extension of the warm home discount, worth £150 for more than 1 million low-wage pensioners.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Tory triple lock was introduced by the Tories, precisely in order to deal with the legacy left by the previous Labour Government when, unless I have got this number wrong, there was a lower take-up of pension credit than there is today—we raised that. The triple lock raised pensioner incomes, and the first act of the Labour Government, of whom he is clearly aiming to be a loyal member, is to take £300 away from people who really need it.

[Peter Swallow]

Three million food parcels were distributed last year. That is the legacy of the Conservative Government. And the triple lock that the Conservatives purport to defend? They broke it in 2022.

I also support the extension of the household support fund to help the families most in need this winter, as well as the Government’s commitment to introducing tougher regulation to the energy market, which has let customers down for too long. I am working hard with Bracknell Forest council to ensure that pensioners in the Bracknell constituency who are in need but not claiming the support to which they are entitled are identified and encouraged to get help. I urge any pensioner who is concerned about their finances to go to Age UK’s benefits calculator to see what support they may be entitled to.

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[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), and to follow the angst-ridden journey with his conscience to ensure that he could abandon those in most need of their winter fuel allowance in this coming winter. It was good of him to highlight the Tory triple lock, which did take the absolutely woeful state of the pension left by the last Labour Government and transform it into a sounder one today. However, even in these conditions—where, thanks to the Tories, pensioners are much better off than they used to be—there are people, and this came from Labour research a few years ago, who will die, according to that research, if this policy, which he in good conscience thinks he should vote for today, is implemented. That is the truth.

That takes us to one key issue that we have been discussing today, which is process. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland seems like an honourable and decent man—at least he used the word “conscience” in this debate, rather than purely political theatre. The point is that when something could lead to thousands of people dying, the Government have not done what they are legally obliged to do—they used some rare exemption requirement—and produce an impact assessment. So we do not know. People who in good conscience want to do the right thing, like the hon. Gentleman, do not know what the impact is. If it was in front of us, and if it validated the Labour party’s previous analysis, and showed that 4,000 people could be going to die, could he really support the measure in good conscience for £1.1 billion when we spend more than £1,200 billion?

The £22 billion black hole is a sort of political theatre from a Government who said they were not going to do politics as theatre and performance, and that they were going to do it properly. In fact, this is a miniscule amount. It is significant, but it is miniscule in the overall scheme of things. A choice has been made and rammed through on a timetable that is not in order and does not follow the normal and proper way of things or allow new Members of Parliament, like the hon. Gentleman, to look at the issue, weigh it up and come to the right conclusion. It is truly shameful. Peter, one of my constituents, is one of 882 people who signed a petition in my constituency against this measure. He and his wife are £12 over the pension credit limit.

[Dr Zubir Ahmed (Glasgow South West) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is citing concerns about the safety of vulnerable groups, and I wonder if he might reflect on the past 14 years, and that he enabled a Government that led to the decay and decline of every single public service. When public services decay and decline, that disproportionately affects vulnerable groups.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that that is not true. I used to chair the Education Committee, so I know a little about that, and standards were lifted—[Interruption.] Look at the OECD or the PISA tables. It seems that the new Ministers do not want to take into account the most reputable international measure of educational performance, which showed that we lifted ourselves up massively. The NHS is under enormous tension and in crisis, but compared with five years ago we have 20% more doctors and nurses, if it was purely a budgetary matter. I wish the new Government well in reforming the NHS, but if we want to see what a Labour Government means for the health service, we can find it right now. We just need to travel to Wales, and the hon. Gentleman knows that that is not delivering.

Let me return to Peter and his wife. They are not the only people who are worried about this policy. I spent a little time yesterday reading Labour’s manifesto, as I hope Labour Members may have done, and I was touched by the quote from Gary on page 48:

“I’ve never struggled this much to keep warm. I can only afford to heat one room with a small portable heater. Sometimes I sleep in my armchair to save money…it’s no way to live.”

Surely Labour Members, in good conscience, recognise that he is right: it is no way to live. When 9.7 million people voted Labour, they voted for it on the promise of change. I do not think this is the change that Gary and others were led to believe they would receive.

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[Emma Reynolds]

I honestly think that Conservative Members have some brass neck. During their time in power, we lost an average of 3 million working days a year to strikes because of their failure to deal with industrial action, and we lost 1.4 million NHS appointments which were cancelled, which meant that pensioners and others were in pain for longer than they needed to be. We will not take lectures from the Conservatives. We have had to take this difficult decision to means-test the winter fuel payment because of the £22 billion black hole in year, this year. [Interruption.] They may not want to hear it, but they should apologise for leaving that black hole. It was created by repeated and reckless unfunded spending—

[Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Is the point of order directly relevant to the current proceedings?

[Graham Stuart]

Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just want some guidance from you on whether it can be appropriate for Ministers and others on the Government Benches who have been directly funded by the trade unions not to declare that personal benefit before doing something like this, which is hurting millions of pensioners.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Members are guided to talk about any such conflict before they speak on the Floor of the House. I am not sure that this has a direct impact on proceedings, but the right hon. Gentleman’s point has been noted.