Support for Pensioners

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for pensioners.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I have secured this debate because not only do pensioners represent an enormous portion of our population—over 10 million people—but the way we support them impacts every single person in this country.

From the start to the end of our careers, we should all aspire to a comfortable retirement for ourselves and our loved ones. I know the Government understand that, because before the election they made big pitches to pensioners. The now Work and Pensions Secretary said:

“Labour are determined to once again be the Pensioners Party.”

The now Prime Minister said:

“My Labour Party will always be on the side of pensioners”.

Members may recall that Labour’s manifesto featured the heartbreaking story of Gary, a pensioner who was struggling to heat his house on his pension. I feel immensely for people like Gary, who have struggled when times were really tough, and who voted with hope for a Government that they believed would reduce their energy bills and look after vulnerable pensioners.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent speech that he is making. Only today I heard from a pensioner in West Worcestershire on an income of £13,500 who was stripped of his winter fuel allowance last year. He is having to live in only one room, as that is all he can afford to heat. Is my hon. Friend as shocked as I was to hear that example?

[Blake Stephenson]

I am absolutely shocked, and I will come on to mention a few stories from my own constituents. They are very similar, and I think we are hearing these stories up and down the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing this important debate.

Adequate Government support for pensioners is vital to ensuring dignity in old age. Indeed, the mark of a civilised society is the extent to which it looks after vulnerable people. Many, many pensioners have only the state pension as their main source of income. The UK Government’s recent action to cut support for pensioners has rightfully been met with anger. Labour MPs, including all Scottish Labour MPs, voted to cut the winter fuel payment for 900,000 Scots. Weeks later, Scottish Labour MSPs voted against an SNP Government motion demanding that the UK Government reverse the introduction of means-testing of the winter fuel payment. Now Anas Sarwar claims they are going to deliver it if he is elected next year. Pensioners do not have time for that kind of Scottish Labour false promise while their benefits are being cut.

Ministers point to the uptake in pension credit as some sort of mitigation for the cut in the winter fuel payment, but it seems ridiculous that the cut was not delayed to allow for a longer uptake campaign. I hope the Minister will tell us, because I do not understand yet, what the trade-off is between the revenue raised by the cut in the winter fuel payment and the uptake of pension credit. If the uptake increases to, say, 50% or 60%, what does that do to the money that the cut is supposed to be raising?

If the Government had delayed the cut, that would have ensured that pensioners do not miss out and would have reduced the number of pensioners going cold this winter. I come from one of the coldest parts of these islands. Hon. Members have probably heard of Braemar, which is often said to be one of the coldest parts of the UK. It is in the north-east, close to Balmoral, the King’s private estate. Many, many pensioners in the north-east are feeling the effects of this cold winter. I totally endorse the comments that were made about the impact that has on people’s health, the increased admission rate to hospital, the increased number of delayed discharges, and the increased number of avoidable deaths.

In the general election, Labour was elected on a platform of change, but I and many voters had no idea that that change would be to cut the winter fuel payment for pensioners. I am old enough to remember previous Labour Governments, and I do not recognise this Government as a real Labour Government. They just do not seem like the kind of Government I was expecting.

At least one colleague in this Chamber was with me when we had a debate on fuel poverty in England. We heard about all sorts of measures that the Government could be taking, such as social tariffs, social prescribing and, perhaps more importantly, some form of windfall tax on the obscene profits that energy companies are making—I think the figure cited was £423 billion or something of that order. A windfall tax on that level of profit would absolutely dwarf any saving from the cut to the winter fuel payment.

In contrast to the UK Government, the Scottish SNP Government will provide universal support through the introduction of the pension-age winter heating payments next year, which will ensure a payment for every pensioner household in the winter of 2025-26. Pensioners in receipt of a qualifying benefit such as pension credit will receive that benefit at a rate of £300 or £200, depending on their age. Meanwhile, all other pensioners will receive £100 from next winter, providing them with support not available anywhere else in the UK. The SNP Government in Scotland have shown that the UK Government’s choice to cut the winter fuel payment was wholly political. For reasons that I do not understand, they chose to punish pensioners, especially those just above benefit thresholds.

As already said, another failure of pensioner support from the UK Government—both Labour and Conservative, I must add—was on WASPI compensation. I was shocked to see that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who happily posed for a photograph with WASPI women while in opposition, ignored them and the ombudsman report, which demanded compensation, as soon as she came to power.

Other policy decisions are hurting pensioners. For example, the employer’s national insurance contribution charges are leading to reduced third-sector service provision. The farmers family tax is leading to higher prices at the supermarket, and that hits the most vulnerable people in society, including pensioners.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the important role that third-sector organisations play in our society. Was he as shocked as I was to learn from Marie Curie cancer care not only that the increase in national insurance will cost it several million pounds a year, but that the winter fuel allowance is being taken from 44,000 terminally ill pensioners?

[Seamus Logan]

I completely agree with the hon. Member —that is absolutely shocking. I was not aware of that particular statistic, but I have spoken several times on the Floor of the House about the plight of hospices. Only this morning, I heard from Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, which is facing a cut of £250,000 as a result of those extra employer’s national insurance contributions. That association does not yet know what the impact of that cut will be, but the two people on my call this morning might well lose their jobs. We are speaking here about nurses and other support workers who provide essential support to people after a stroke. That is the impact of those national insurance changes on such organisations.

I will wind up by simply saying—as I said earlier—that to me, all of this shows that this Government fundamentally do not understand the situation of so many pensioners throughout the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

That argument is made a lot. All I would say is that all of us should want all pensioners to receive the benefits they are entitled to and to drive pension credit take-up. We are confident that this policy will deliver significant savings, and the costings put into the Budget in the autumn take into account an increase in pension credit take-up.

For most pensioners I speak to, concerns about the state of the health service are front of mind. The biggest betrayal of pensioners today is the state of our NHS—run down in England and undermined in Wales, with the capital budgets handed down by the UK Government to the Welsh Government not remotely sufficient to maintain the NHS estate or to invest in badly needed diagnostic equipment.

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Torsten Bell]

No.

That is why this Government are investing £22 billion in the English NHS this year and next, with consequentials for the Welsh and Scottish Governments. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan)—

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Torsten Bell]

No.

The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East rightly says that society will be judged on how it treats its pensioners, particularly with regard to the NHS, but in Scotland we have now seen five new NHS recovery plans announced in four years. That is not a tribute to our older generations. Supporting pensioners in the 2020s is about more than opposing every tough choice—

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

On a point of order, Dame Siobhain. Is it orderly for me to point out that the NHS is suffering from a number of over-65s who sadly have a high level of mortality—

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. I do apologise to the hon. Member, but that is not a point of order, and she knows it. I call the Minister.