Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024

Lord Bishop of Sheffield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there have been some very fine speeches, but I will not repeat them. I really hope that the Government Benches are listening because there is agreement across the House.

I will add a couple of points. Something I found very galling over the last few days is Members of the Government telling us that they are not frightened to be unpopular. I admire people who are not frightened to be unpopular, but sometimes you are unpopular because you are unpopular and not because you are brave. There is something to be said about the self-congratulations of people saying, “This proves that we’re proper leaders and that we’ve got courage”. Actually, it does not prove that. It sometimes can prove that you are tin-eared, not listening, and more interested in yourself and your internal party discipline than in the state of the country. Bravery might have been to have gone out on the doorsteps during the election to tell people that you were going to abolish the winter fuel subsidy. I might have had some admiration if that had been a campaigning tool from the manifesto, but it was not.

I am very worried about something else that is an implicit part of this discussion: this debate is in danger of becoming quite polarising and divisive in a very different way. I saw that in relation to what is known as boomer bashing. I do not know whether people have heard the insult “Okay, boomer”, but it is quite fashionable. There was a social media tweet—I do not know what it is called any more, maybe a posting—that went viral a few days ago. It was posted by a clinical consultant with quite some considerable followers, who wrote:

“I’ve elderly parents & most of my patients are elderly. However, I find it tough to sympathize with a demographic that’s been fortunate to see kids & grandkids grow up; voted for Brexit; got free education; triple lock pensions; and kept the Tories in power”.


I quote that because it completely split the audience. Thousands and thousands of people commented. Either people said that this is absolutely right—“These are the greedy boomers who’ve destroyed this country, the pro-Tories” and all the rest of it—or people said that it is a really unpleasant and nasty point of view.

I worry, and I warn the Government, that there is a danger of stirring up this notion of a gerontocracy. I have been doing quite a lot of media, and if noble Lords listen to phone-ins they will hear what I have heard frequently: that these are old, greedy people who have ruined the planet, ruined the country, ruined everything, and they deserve what they get. I do not in any way imagine the Government think that this is what they are doing, but it is a defence that people use to justify this policy.

I say that particularly because we have had a number of lectures from the Government about other people being the kind to use toxic language and stir up divisiveness—it is always the other people and not the nice people. In this instance, the “nice” party is in danger of having stirred up quite a lot of antagonism and hatred towards a generation who deserve better—ordinary working people who just happen to be old and proud enough to not want to claim benefits. They really deserve better, as do we all.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, I speak in broad support of the regret Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I appreciate the very tight fiscal constraints under which the Government are having to operate, and the need for tough choices to be made. I also accept the recent Statement by the Prime Minister that tough choices are almost by definition unpopular choices. Tough choices must also be wise choices, however, and I confess that I harbour misgivings about the wisdom of this proposal for two reasons.

First, as others have observed, I worry about the speed at which these regulations have been laid, given the likely impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. There has been no careful assessment of this impact, which is bound to be exacerbated by the fact that the energy price cap has just been lifted, meaning that this winter many pensioners will face increased fuel tariffs precisely when they are bound to incur increased fuel consumption, and just when a relief that they previously enjoyed has been withdrawn.

Secondly, I wonder whether the threshold for continued receipt of winter fuel payments is the right one. I understand that pinning continued payments to pension credits will make it straightforward to administer and, given the speed with which the Government feel that they need to act, I appreciate the appeal of this simple solution. However, I doubt that in this situation a simple solution is the best solution. All Members of this House recognise that many either do not claim pension credits to which they are entitled or are marginally ineligible for those credits and will inevitably experience considerable additional hardship on account of these regulations.

I am grateful to the Minister for the encouragement she has been giving this week to all those who are entitled to pension credits to apply for them, and I assure her that I shall do everything I can to communicate that message across South Yorkshire and the East Riding. However, I ask her, in a constructive spirit, whether the Government are confident that they have calibrated with sufficient care the eligibility bar for continued receipt of winter fuel payments. Will the Government not consider again the possibility that the bar has been set too low?

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott on the Front Bench, and I have sat here thinking, “How did we come to this?”—a first-world country that could treat our pensioners so badly. How could we sit here and have a debate about taking away really needed money from the elderly and most vulnerable people in our communities? Today is quite a cold day; it suddenly went cold, and I am feeling it, and I am pretty certain that most pensioners in their households will be thinking, “Should I switch the heating on or leave it off?”

I speak on behalf of the 10,207 pensioners in the city of Leicester who are now not going to receive this payment. I feel sad, but also ashamed that we are standing here debating a very small saving in the bigger scheme of things. I do not understand it—I do not get it—because I felt that we were a country that looked after the most vulnerable. I felt that we were this gold standard that people looked at, and that we were able to say that we protect those who cannot protect themselves. Yet here we are, quite happy to debate £1.4 billion. I am not going to challenge the public sector workers’ pay award; I just want to focus long and hard on why we are sitting here thinking that we have no hope in changing the Government’s mind. If the Government really want to help, they need to take this ridiculous notion back and rethink. If the Government want to save £1.4 billion there are plenty of other ways of doing it, and I urge the Government to use them.