Winter Fuel Payment

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

Let me make a little progress and then I will be delighted to take more interventions from colleagues.

The Chancellor has previously argued that winter fuel payments should be means-tested and cut for the richest pensioners, but who here thinks that someone on an income of £11,500 is rich? Age UK estimated that over 80% of pensioners living below or only just above the poverty line would lose their winter fuel payment.

The issue is not just that low-income vulnerable pensioners miss out on help with their heating because they are just above the pension credit threshold—the problem is worse than that. Last summer, the Government knew that over 800,000 people may be eligible for pension credit but did not claim it, meaning that they, too, would miss out on the winter fuel payment. The Pensions Minister at the time, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), assured us that the Government would get on top of that. In fact, she told us that her target was to have 100% of those eligible for pension credit claiming it. But here we are many months later, and still around three quarters of a million eligible pensioners are not on pension credit. That is another promise easily made but easily broken. There has been a woeful failure by the Government to close properly that gap, despite all the coverage the winter fuel payment received.

Of course, we knew that this would be hard. We, too, had pension credit uptake campaigns in Government. More people signed up, but still many did not. I expect the Government knew that they would fail, too. Their officials would have told them, but it was easier for them to assure the press, the charities and their Back Benchers, “Don’t worry,” just as we have heard their Ministers do about the welfare reforms in the last 24 hours. For them, it was easier to wait for the spring to come and hope that everyone would simply forget. Well I say to them, “We won’t let you forget.” Nor will millions of pensioners and their families: 10 million pensioners are missing out on help with their heating, among them around 1 million of the most vulnerable people in our country, quite literally left in the cold by this Labour Government. That will not be forgotten in a hurry.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. It is absolutely right that we ask the questions we are asking today. The statistic that has shocked me most in this debate is that of the millions of pensioners who lost their winter fuel payment, 44,000 are estimated to have been terminally ill. Is she as shocked as I am by that statistic?

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

While we are on broken promises, the hon. Member promised to tell me whether the Tory party policy is to reverse the change, and I have heard nothing on that front. I will come on to manifestos shortly.

There is the specific hypocrisy of the Opposition campaigning against the change having called for it in their own 2017 election manifesto. Back then, they attacked the winter fuel payment for being “paid regardless of need”, and that is before we get to the Leader of the Opposition’s bold plans to means-test the state pension—

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister has just said that, as it is an Opposition day debate, he will speak exclusively about what the Opposition think and say. Is it your understanding, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it is in order for a Minister at the Dispatch Box not to defend the track record of his own Government?