Winter Fuel Payment

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Louise Jones]

I believe it was then suspended, but I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In his earlier remarks, he raised the valid point that no Member of this House should be receiving the winter fuel payment, and he spoke about the very poorest in this country facing that payment being taken away. We have protected the very poorest pensioners, but whenever there is a threshold, there will always be people who fall on the other side of it. I and my colleagues have been very aware of people coming to us who need us to help them find alternative sources of help.

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

rose—

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

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

It is an honour to take part in this debate, and this is an extremely pertinent time for it. We all hope we are through the worst of the winter—although in my part of the world nobody puts their snow boots away until we have got through lambing season, because lambing storms usually bring snow—but we need to know, as we get through the winter and into the better weather, what the impact of this policy decision has been on our pensioners, on our health service, on A&E admissions and on other allowances and benefits. We need to know the overall cost of the decision.

The hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons), who is no longer in his place, suggested that he has more pensioners in his constituency than anyone else. Having checked with the House of Commons Library as I sat here, I assure him that Staffordshire Moorlands has more, because we have 22,197 compared with his 20,909. Of those 22,197, over 20,000 of them have been affected by this decision, and Staffordshire Moorlands, as the name suggests, is not exactly warm. Last winter, we saw a low of minus 14°C; this year, we saw only minus 5°C —it has been a relatively mild winter.

It is incredibly important that we find out exactly what impact the decision has had. At the pensioners’ fair I held in Cheadle back in November, pensioners were terrified. I am holding another fair next week on 28 March in Leek, and I want to hear from my local pensioners what impact the decision has had on them, how it has made them feel and how often they did not switch the heating on.

I am proud that I was part of a party in government that introduced the triple lock. The suspension of the triple lock has been referred to. Those were exceptional circumstances. That was at a point when we had had furlough and earnings had gone down by 20%—that is how the statistics worked. When people came off furlough and the earnings went up by a much higher number, that was the statistical anomaly that meant giving pensioners the increase in line with earnings would not have reflected reality. Earnings had not gone up by that amount; it was that furlough had ended.

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

Can I be clear in my mind that what the right hon. Lady is saying is that at a tough time, the then Government took some tough decisions, and that resulted in the pension level being £560 lower now than if they had not made that decision—a difference far greater than the winter fuel payment amount? That Government made tough decisions at a tough time that are costing pensioners money today.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

What was happening then was once in a generation, and it was not a real increase in earnings; it was merely that people had gone from 80% of their earnings back to 100%. When earnings had gone down by 20%, we did not cut the state pension but continued to increase it in line with the triple lock.

I want to make a point about universal benefits as opposed to means-tested ones. The Labour party seems to think that a universal benefit is bad because somebody who does not really need it might receive it. I take the other view: it is important that we get to as many people as possible who need it, and if that means a few people at the top end of the earnings level get a benefit they might not need—

[David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)]

Given that the right hon. Member’s belief is so strong, will she enlighten me on whether she voted to strip child benefit from certain families, as was Conservative policy? That was a universal benefit.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

The hon. Member makes a good point, and that was a difficult decision because it was the way we could ensure that those at the higher end of the earnings spectrum were taxed on their child benefit. That is a different way of dealing with a benefit that some people may not be in need of but are in receipt of. It would have been perfectly possible for the Government to tax winter fuel payments. That would have meant that those on £13,500 were still getting the money they needed and the Richard Bransons of the world would be paying tax on it. That was a choice available to the Government; they chose not to do that. They chose to just take the benefit away.

The fact that child benefit goes automatically to mothers is an incredibly important point, and winter fuel allowance going automatically to pensioners was valuable to them. I ask the Government and the Minister, who I know well and who is an honourable and decent gentleman, whether they might consider putting in some form of transitional arrangements, rather than having the cliff edge that hurts many pensioners. I also ask whether they will give us the information about whether there is fraud and error in the system now. Will the DWP accounts be affected by the fact that the winter fuel allowance has been taken away in this way and more people may be guilty of fraud and error? Will the Minister give us information on the impact that the measure has had on pensioner health? That matters vitally to us all.