Winter Fuel Payment

Jonathan Brash Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I was coming to the exact answer to that: responsible choices are how we can ensure that we deliver what matters most to pensioners: a rising state pension and rescuing an NHS that was collapsing on the right hon. Lady’s watch. That means we will make choices that may not always be easy—I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue in this place—but are necessary. Everyone in this House knows the economic and fiscal context.

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

In Hartlepool we have taken a proactive approach over this issue. Since October I have been working with Hartlepool citizens advice bureau to help pensioners get the support that they deserve. The campaign ends next week, but as of today we have managed to raise £885,900 of additional annual income by ensuring that pensioners get the benefits to which they are entitled. Will the Minister congratulate Hartlepool citizens advice bureau on its extraordinary work?

[Torsten Bell]

I congratulate it and I thank my hon. Friend, and probably hon. Members on both sides of the House, who I am sure have engaged with local charities in supporting their pensioners in the months that have gone by.

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[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

I have been reflecting that I have been in this Chamber for 10 years, and for most of that time I, like many of my hon. Friends now sitting on the Opposition Benches, were of course seated on the Government Benches. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) claimed that we on the Opposition side now resort to stomping and outrage, whereas the Government are acting calmly and doggedly, but I must say to the new hon. Member that if I experienced anything over the last 10 years, it was that the faux outrage from the Labour Opposition on this side over 10 long years was all about the sorts of issues we are raising today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) reminded Labour Members that, in the 14 years that the Conservatives were in government, we did not remove the winter fuel payment. Furthermore, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) added the benefit of his experience, and explained that he had looked at this matter when he was a Minister, but concluded that it would be wrong morally and fiscally to remove the winter fuel payment.

So I say very gently to hon. Member for Makerfield that we on the Opposition side of the House have, for too many years, had to put up with all the false outrage and the anger that hon. Members who are now in government showed us over the years. However, I can tell them that the anger coming to the Labour Government will not be from my hon. Friends but from the pensioners in the hon. Member’s constituency, and indeed in every constituency that now has a Labour MP.

[Mr Brash]

The hon. Member is reflecting on his party’s record in office and how pensioners may feel about it. How does he think pensioners feel about the record of 300,000 more pensioners being in poverty thanks to his Administration over the last 14 years?

[Alberto Costa]

I am afraid that the hon. Member misses the point. The whole point of this debate is to acknowledge that there are poorer and vulnerable people in our society, and that we kept the winter fuel payment precisely to ensure that the most vulnerable pensioners in our society were assisted. What we have heard from Labour party Members—the very Labour party Members who said during the election that they cared for the most vulnerable and the poorest in society—reminds of a comment that they once made about the Conservative party. If there is any nasty party, the removal of the winter fuel payment and the total absence of Labour MPs in the Chamber is proof positive that there is only one nasty party today: the Labour party.

Some of my constituents voted at the last general election for a Labour party that promised to help working people and promised to be the party for the weakest in society. At no point did any of my constituents who put a cross next to the South Leicestershire Labour party candidate think that a Labour Government would remove the winter fuel payment, yet they did that within weeks of taking office. At the same time, they cruelly increased salaries for those who did not require increases. The train drivers were demanding exorbitant salary increases, which the Conservatives resisted when in government. The new Labour Government capitulated, taking money from those who needed it—the most vulnerable in society—and giving it to those who did not need it. That was a betrayal of the British electorate, when the Labour party said it had the most vulnerable people in mind.

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[Alberto Costa]

Indeed. My hon. Friend continues to make very sensible points. I am sure pensioners watching this debate will, once and for all, see that in 14 years of Conservative government we had protecting the most vulnerable and weakest in society at the forefront of our mind.

[Mr Brash]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman giving way, but I want to press him one more time, because I do not feel that he answered the question from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones). He made play of the fact that public sector workers were given a pay rise. I want absolute clarity here: is he saying that he does not support pay rises for soldiers, nurses and teachers? A simple yes or no will do.

[Alberto Costa]

I will give the hon. Gentleman a very clear and unambiguous response: I support pensioners and the weakest in society. It is disgraceful that it is a Labour Government who have taken away money that is needed by the most vulnerable in society.

I will end where the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent, ended. I ask, as she did, what was all this for? Why deny the weakest and most vulnerable elderly people in our society money they desperately needed to keep their houses warm? I add, as she did, that to govern is to choose—the idiom we have heard time and again. Well, the Labour party in government is showing its true colours to the British electorate. It has never been a party for the working people, the most vulnerable or the weakest, and today, it clearly demonstrates that it is most certainly not a party for our pensioners.

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[Mark Ferguson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but those in receipt of pension credit are still receiving winter fuel allowance, and all will benefit from this party’s total commitment to the triple lock.

[Mr Brash]

My hon. Friend mentioned the triple lock and the very tough decision that the Opposition took when in government, but what has been the cumulative effect of that for all pensioners in this country to date?

[Mark Ferguson]

As I mentioned, my hon. Friend commissioned research from the Library. The cumulative effect overall will be somewhere in the realm of £1,500 per pensioner. As I said, were I a Member in 2021, I believe that I would have agreed that 8.3% was an unlikely increase. However, the Conservative Government were happy to raise it by 10.1% and then 8.5% in subsequent years. There is clearly a bit of dissonance.