Winter Fuel Payment

Harriet Cross Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I have not written a speech—I have written down a few points—because, like many colleagues, I have spent the past week agonising over how to vote today. In the end, I decided to vote with my conscience, which meant that I voted with the Government. [Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh, but I will tell them why.

Today I listened sincerely to contributions from Conservative Members, and this is what I have learned. First, there were several interventions in which they criticised the Government’s efforts to improve the take-up of pension credit. [Interruption.] Well, they did—Members can go and read Hansard if they want to dispute that. There have been several criticisms of that, almost to the point that, when they talk about who is vulnerable, I wonder whether they have a blind spot for some of our most vulnerable constituents.

Secondly, I have learned about Conservative Members’ disdain for hard-working people, because we have learned that, in their spending plans, they intended to reject the pay recommendations of their own pay body.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

Does the hon. Member appreciate that some of the hardest working people are the pensioners we are now standing up for, and who we are trying to stop freezing in the winter to come and those ahead?

[Sam Rushworth]

I absolutely do, and Members may recall that I came to this House last week and asked the Chancellor a question about my own constituents. I represent the snowiest and coldest constituency in England, and I have had deep concerns about those pensioners. However, I have studied the detail and listened to pensioners in my constituency. In the last week alone, it has turned out that several people who have come forward to me expressing concerns about this policy are people who could be claiming pension credit but are not.

I want to make a broader point about the winter fuel allowance. The winter fuel allowance was introduced under the last Labour Government in 1997, when the state pension was £3,247 a year. If that had increased at the rate of inflation, today it would be £6,200 a year. Thankfully, it is more than twice that. [Hon. Members: “Because of us.”] Conservative Members say that it is because of them, but, again, they may want to look at the record. In fact, under both the previous Labour Government and the previous Conservative Government, the state pension increased at above the rate of inflation, and I absolutely welcome that. The winter fuel allowance, however, has not increased for 20 years. So the winter fuel allowance, in real terms, has become less and less year after year. The point I am making is that we need to consider our people. If the Conservatives’ argument is that, after 14 years in government, people on the full state pension are £100 away from death and destitution, what have they been doing for 14 years?

We need a new settlement for the economy, and this Government are actually answering the concerns of my constituents, who live in cold, stone-built, badly insulated homes, and who lost out when the previous Government chose to cut the funding available to insulate homes. This Government are setting up Great British Energy, which will help to cut bills over the long term. People are poor and struggling to pay their bills not because we do not give away enough taxpayers’ money in small pockets of benefits here and there. What we need are higher wages and better pensions, and I have been convinced by the Chancellor’s arguments that, under this Government, the pension will rise at or above the rate of inflation year on year, while energy bills will fall.

Finally, my constituents would not thank me if I did not take steps to stabilise the economy, because we need to get NHS waiting lists down and we need—

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

Some 17,047 pensioners in Gordon and Buchan will lose their winter fuel payment following today’s vote by the Labour party, but this decision for my constituents shows that they are being let down by their Governments at Holyrood and at Westminster. The Labour party is choosing to let them down by cutting the winter fuel payment, and the SNP is choosing not to pass on Barnett consequentials. In north-east Scotland, winters are longer and harsher than in most of the country. Our temperatures often fall below minus 10°C for a sustained period, and in recent years it has not been unusual to have had minus 20°C in Aberdeenshire. The winter fuel payment is not a luxury for our pensioners; it is a lifeline.

This is the Labour party’s choice. As much as it would like to explain that choice away, it has chosen to cut the winter fuel payment, and it must face what that means. Labour’s choice means that our pensioners now have to make their own choices, so Labour’s choice has become a pensioner’s choice.

Perhaps most shocking of all is Labour’s breathtaking hypocrisy on this issue. In 2017, Labour Members on these Opposition Benches had their own research showing that cutting winter fuel payments could lead to almost 4,000 excess deaths. They then vehemently opposed any changes to what they called that “vital” support. What has changed? Have pensioners suddenly become more resilient to the cold, or has the Labour party simply abandoned its principles to fund its own political choices?

Many pensioners in my constituency still rely on solid fuels such as oil, so once a year, going into winter, they fill up their tanks. Payment for that will be coming shortly—before November, and way before next year and any pension rises. How will those pensioners afford to fill their tanks and heat their homes in the months to come?