Social Security Advisory Committee: Winter Fuel Payment
Debate between Helen Whately and Lindsay Hoyle(1 week, 2 days ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Emma Reynolds)
We welcome the letter from the chair of the Social Security Advisory Committee. We were hoping to respond to the letter on the day of the Budget. Regrettably, there has been an unexpected further delay, and we are due to issue the response this week. However, my officials met the committee in August to discuss the regulations, prior to the committee’s formal scrutiny in early September.
I want to explain briefly why it is important to invoke the urgency procedure in this case. We needed to make the necessary Exchequer savings in the current financial year, as the regulations needed to come into force on 16 September. The previous Government left us with a £22 billion black hole, with Treasury reserves spent three times over. The day-to-day departmental spending set out by the previous Government in their spring Budget was not even close to reality. It is now up to us to clear up the mess of the previous Government, so we had to take some difficult decisions, such as means-testing the winter fuel payment, but we remain determined to do everything possible to support the poorest pensioners.
We have taken immediate action to increase the take-up of pension credit, working with charities and local authorities and through a campaign in print and broadcast media. The Government have written to more than 12 million pensioners about the changes to means-testing the winter fuel payment. We have also written to 120,000 pensioners on housing benefit, who could be entitled to pension credit, to encourage them to claim. We have extended the household support fund until March 2026. Thanks to our steadfast commitment to the triple lock, more than 12 million pensioners will see their state pension rise by up to £470 next year, and up to £1,900 over the course of this Parliament. The warm home discount, which we heard about a minute ago, is worth £150 off energy bills for low-income households. The warm homes plan will in the longer term insulate 5 million more homes.
By taking these difficult decisions, we were able to provide a cash injection of £22.6 billion to the NHS budget, which is the largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending—outside of covid—since 2010. That will bring down waiting times for people across the country, including many pensioners. We are taking the responsible and difficult decisions to clear up the mess of the previous Government, to fix the foundations of our economy and rebuild our public services.
Helen Whately
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.
This Government made a choice to take away the winter fuel payment from 10 million pensioners this winter and to rely on the notoriously under-claimed pension credit as a system of means-testing it. That choice will make life harder for pensioners across the country. It will see 750,000 of the poorest pensioners miss out on much-needed help with the cost of heating, and according to the Labour party’s own research, it could lead to 4,000 additional deaths this winter. The Government know that. That is why they have not done an impact assessment. Perhaps it is why, after seven weeks, they still have not responded to the concerns of their own advisory committee.
The committee wrote the Secretary of State a letter containing its concerns about how the policy will affect the poorest people. It said that 70% of disabled pensioners will miss out on their payment this winter, and it suggested expanding the eligibility for winter fuel payments beyond pension credit because the committee knows that the Government’s savings are based on a third of the poorest pensioners missing out. In direct contrast to the Government, the committee said that
“a more detailed assessment is urgently required”,
as colleagues from all parts of the House—including Labour Members—charities and pensioner groups across the country have also said.
Here we are, seven weeks later, and the Secretary of State is yet to even respond to the advisory committee. In fact, she is not even here to answer this urgent question. I ask the Minister: will the Government now, after seven weeks, respond to their own advisory committee? Will they now, after seven weeks, publish a full impact assessment for everyone to see? Does she accept that her Government have got this wrong? Does she recognise that they have negligently underestimated how many people will fall through the cracks? I suspect that deep down she is worried, as I am, about pensioners who cannot afford to heat their homes. I am sure her Secretary of State has been lobbying the Chancellor behind the scenes—perhaps that is where she is right now, instead of being here. Will the hon. Lady go back to her Chancellor one more time and try to make her think again?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Lindsay Hoyle(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Mr Speaker
I call the new shadow Secretary of State, and welcome her to her post.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
May I say how nice it is to be sitting opposite the right hon. Lady again, albeit, regrettably, having swapped places with her? I enjoyed our exchanges on social care during the last Parliament, and appreciated our constructive conversations during the pandemic, although, given how well she knows the care brief, I suspect that she was gutted, as I was, to see the incoming Government abandon the care cap and scrap more than £50 million of funding for social care training. The consistent feedback from jobcentres was that the biggest barrier to young people taking up job opportunities in social care was lack of career progression, hence our reforms to create a career path for care workers and investment in training. Has the right hon. Lady spoken to her counterpart in the Department of Health and Social Care about the impact of those social care cuts on her ambitions to get more young people working or learning?
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The Conservatives are the party of work and aspiration, and once again, we left office with unemployment at a historic low. We all know that Labour always leaves unemployment higher than when it came into office, but rarely has it seemed in such a hurry to achieve that. Its first Budget will, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, cost the country 50,000 jobs in the next few years alone. What assessment has the right hon. Lady made of the cost to her Department of those job losses?
Helen Whately
I wonder if the Secretary of State did not hear my earlier question; I said that I was grateful that she is continuing the work that we did in government, through the WorkWell programme, to help people in ill health into work by joining up healthcare and employment. However, the point I was just making, to which she did not respond, was that 50,000 jobs will be lost as a result of Labour’s Budget. That is not the only thing frightening the life out of businesses at the moment—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady can keep pointing at me, but this is topical questions, and I have all these Back Benchers to get in, so questions really need to be shorter.
Helen Whately
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Budget is not the only thing frightening the life out of businesses at the moment. Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is a wrecking ball for the UK labour market. Labour’s own impact assessment predicts that businesses could cut staff—
Mr Speaker
Order. I did make the suggestion that you might come to the end of your question, but you decided to carry on reading, so I will have to stop you. I call the Secretary of State.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Helen Whately and Lindsay Hoyle(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I wonder if the right hon. Lady can see the irony in the fact that the new bus system that she is so excited about introducing is broadly the same as the train system that she is busy dismantling. The simple truth is that without funding, the Government’s plan will not make struggling bus services viable or affordable for passengers. What has helped is our £2 fare cap, which has saved millions of people money and helped to keep local buses going, especially in rural areas. Does the Secretary of State agree that the £2 fare cap has been a good thing and, crucially, is she going to keep it?
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
After just 100 days, this is already one of the most anti-growth Governments in history, from investor-scaring taxes to the right hon. Lady hitting the brakes on our transport infrastructure pipeline, with Northern Powerhouse Rail, the Midlands Rail Hub and road upgrades across the country all on hold. Growth requires investment and investment requires confidence. Will she give some to the businesses looking to invest, to the contractors waiting to get started, and, crucially, to the communities that so badly need these upgrades?