Winter Fuel Payment

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

When I was 14 years old, I started delivering Meals on Wheels on Christmas day for the disadvantaged around west London, and I have done so every year since that I have lived in London. The scheme is organised by Age UK and it is a privilege to be invited into people’s homes in midwinter. I look forward to doing it again this Christmas, and I hope that those I visited last year will be there this year.

The Government are seeking to raise money, and I get that. They are seeking to do so by getting those with the broader shoulders to take the heaviest load, and I get that too. In order to achieve those goals, the Government are means-testing the winter fuel payment—and there is the rub. By choosing that means test, the Government are indeed taking the winter fuel payment from millionaire pensioners, but they are also taking it from the much less well off and from the not well off at all. In short, they are cutting too deep.

Mistakes happen, but it is how we deal with mistakes that is important. I spent the weekend listening to the Prime Minister using the word “tough” as many times as he possibly could. On the battlefields of the world, which I have been on for the last 25 years, toughness was not one of the things that people looked for in their leaders. The two things they looked for were courage and competence. Courage—moral courage—sometimes means that people need to admit when they have made a mistake and change their plan. However, the people of Spelthorne—and, I suspect, the pensioners across the country—would just settle for a bit of competence. This Government need to get good at governing, and they need to do so quickly.