Winter Fuel Payment
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Luke Evans(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Maybe in two minutes, this debate can best be summed up with a lesser-known fable: the farmer and the viper. A farmer was walking through his field. It was very cold in the winter, and he found a viper just under the bushes. The viper was cold, limp, and almost dead. The farmer knew it was poisonous, but he felt compassion for the creature, picked it up and put it in his pocket. As the creature became warm, it reverted to type and bit him and, as he died in that field, he said, “I got what I deserved. I shouldn’t have shown kindness to a scoundrel.”
That rings true, because after 14 years of the Labour party being out in the cold, the pensioners of this country backed Labour into government, under an impression created by the Prime Minister. Only in May 2024, he goaded our Government, asking
“Will the Prime Minister now rule out taking pensioners’ winter fuel payments off them?”—[Official Report, 1 May 2024; Vol. 749, c. 255.]
If we scratch the surface a little bit deeper, though, we find that, on 25 March 2014, the now Chancellor said that
“We are the party who have said that we will cut the winter fuel allowance for the richest pensioners and means-test that benefit to save money”—[Official Report, 25 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 174-175.]
so this is not a response to a concocted black hole. This was a choice—as Laura Kuenssberg pointed out, it was a choice to pay the unions on the back of our pensioners.
The public are not stupid. The cartoonist Matt sums it up perfectly when he says, “Surprisingly, Robin Hood, nobody likes your plan to steal from pensioners to give to train drivers.” I was in the Chamber last week when the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero said that Conservative Members should
“show a bit of bravery—even break the Whip and stand out from the crowd.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2024; Vol. 753, c. 461.]
I am disappointed that Labour Members did not take that advice, with only one Labour MP doing so.
