Winter Fuel Payment

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

This afternoon, we have heard some fantastic speeches in which Members have set out heartbreaking real-life stories from their constituents about the situation older people have found themselves in this winter. Pensioners have been forced to choose between eating and heating as a result of the Government’s choice to remove the winter fuel allowance from around 10 million of them. That was compounded by shocking delays in processing pension credit claims. Along with those who have just missed the threshold to receive support, it has meant that many, many people who are desperately in need have missed out on hundreds of pounds that would have made a real difference to them this winter.

As has previously been said:

“Although the poorest do receive some help through cold weather payments, they go only to those on income support, who generally have to wait until after the cold weather for help to be available. The payments are no help at all to most pensioners, including…those on the margins of poverty”.

The individual continues that they were

“simply not prepared to allow another winter to go by when pensioners are fearful of turning up their heating, even on the coldest winter days, because they do not know whether they will have the help they need for their fuel bills.”—[Official Report, 25 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 779-80.]

Those were the words of the former Labour Chancellor and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who brought in the winter fuel payment. It is a great shame that his successors in a Labour Government today have taken a very different view on support for pensioners.

The choice made by the Labour Government—almost their first choice in office last July—is as cruel as it is unnecessary, and it has real-life consequences for vulnerable people. Like many other Members, I suspect on both sides of the House, I have met my local branch of Age UK and other local charities. They all tell me about how hard their services—services vitally important to pensioners, such as GPs, hospices and pharmacies—will be hit by the Government’s jobs tax, the NICs hike. Alongside that impact on services pensioners rely on, this Government have slashed the winter fuel payment for so many. Understandably, pensioners are asking what the Labour party has against them—or, for that matter, against farmers or businesses.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

Let me just complete the point. I know that the hon. Gentleman has only come into the debate relatively late, but I will take an intervention from him afterwards.

The message is, under this Government, do not run a hospice, a pharmacy or a care home. Do not be a farmer. Do not run a business and, heaven forbid, do not get old.

[Jonathan Davies]

We on the Government Benches are disappointed to have had to make this decision, but it is a symptom of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I just remind the shadow Minister of something. I understand that he stood in the 2017 general election. Some of the policies in the Conservative manifesto at that time were to means-test the winter fuel allowance and to reduce the triple lock to a double lock.

[Edward Argar]

I will make a number of points to the hon. Gentleman. I was going to come on to his first point, but I will happily do so now. He seems to be alluding to the mythical so-called black hole that is so often bandied around. The OBR pointedly declined to validate that or back it up in its assessment, and it cannot be deemed a rationale for doing this.