Support for Pensioners

Helen Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing this debate, and indeed for his strong speech. It is also always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), or “strapping of Strangford”, as I think we are going to have to call him now. As other hon. Members have alluded to—not only alluded to; it has been stated quite openly—it is appalling that not a single Labour Back Bencher is here to defend the Government’s policy. That is because, thus far, I have not heard any credible defence from the Labour Benches for the removal of the winter fuel payment.

I remember the Minister from Oxford, and I know he is a doughty champion of all things socialist, so I look forward to an equally strong defence of this policy. I say to him gently that it is clearly the wrong policy, and I am afraid that he has been given a hospital pass, to be frank, to have to come here today to try to defend it.

Under the last Government, more than 20,000 pensioners across my constituency of Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphook and the surrounding villages received Government support to assist them financially with energy bills and daily costs through the most challenging of times, such as covid-19 and the war in Ukraine. Now, since only 1,200 pensioners in my constituency are eligible for pension credit, nearly 19,000 pensioners have been left in the cold by the Government.

At a pension credit surgery that I held in October to assist with pension credit applications for those who might not have access to the right technology, I met Diana. She told me that the extra money from the winter fuel payment was essential to heating her home—for her and for her husband, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Now that it has been withdrawn, Diana told me that she has to choose between heating her home and eating food.

The scale of this issue is hugely concerning. Age UK has reported that 82% of all pensioners living on or just above the poverty line will lose that payment—a total of 2.5 million people. Independent Age has confirmed that raising the pension credit take-up from 60% to 100% would raise 440,000 pensioners out of poverty.

Energy costs continue to rise under this Labour Government—by 10% in October, when I was running that pension credit surgery, and again in January—meaning that pensioners are paying, on average, an extra £170 since the beginning of this Labour Government. It is remarkable that the Government are not taking advice from industry experts and from charities on how to reduce the healthcare strains and increase the welfare of our pensioners.

Currently, our pensioners are having to make difficult choices, as other hon. Members have said, including opting to stay at home to ensure that they are not taken ill by the cold weather, or indeed choosing not to eat at all for days. I have heard that at first hand, through a survey that I ran to assess the impact that the withdrawal of the winter fuel payment is having on pensioners in my constituency. I am not going to go through every single response, but Sheila, a talented craftswoman, told me that the cold is forcing her to have to sit in multiple layers of jumpers and is heavily affecting her ability to sew and knit, with the cold worsening her arthritis.

Now that my constituents are unable to rely on Government support, I am routinely attending local pensioner support groups across my constituency, including those run by the brilliant Farnham Assist and the Hindhead lunch club, which brings people together fortnightly to provide them with a hot meal, conversation and the opportunity to socialise in a warm community hall.

As someone who spent their career prior to becoming a Member of Parliament working in the healthcare system—including, latterly, in NHS England—I am hugely concerned about the pressure that withdrawing the winter fuel payment is putting on our NHS. The Labour party’s own assessment of the issue when it was in opposition said that it would cause 4,000 deaths. When I pushed the Health Secretary on that figure at the Health and Social Care Committee some weeks ago, he could not give me an answer as to why those 4,000 deaths were suddenly not going to happen. On top of that, we know that the £10.6 billion that the Government allocated to NHS England in the Budget will be eaten up by national insurance rises, inflation and pay increases for staff. Not a single penny of it will go to improving patient care, including patient care for pensioners.

Last October, my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) asked the Department of Health and Social Care what the potential impact of introducing means testing for the winter fuel payment was on hospital admissions. The Minister’s response pointed him to the extra funding given to the household support fund in the October Budget. However, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire, the Minister has since admitted in a letter that the fund was not designed to support pensioners.

If the Government are unsure on the impacts of the household support fund in my constituency, perhaps I can help them. The south-east receives the second-lowest funding amount from the household support fund at £30.57 per pensioner per year, whereas the winter fuel payment gave pensioners up to £600 depending on their circumstances. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify how pensioners such as Diana and Sheila can be supported through the loss of the winter fuel payment when they are not eligible for pension credit.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the Member that she came into the debate very late. I do not wish to embarrass her in any way, but if she wants to intervene, she needs to be here at the start of the debate.