Winter Fuel Payment

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

About 20,000 pensioners in Castle Point are set to lose their winter fuel payment under this cruel and vindictive policy that the Labour Government have chosen to adopt. Contrary to the accusations from the Government, I have, with the support of former Work and Pensions Ministers, run campaign after campaign to increase the uptake of pension credit. Only 2,076 pensioners receive it in my constituency, despite campaign after campaign and leafletting groups and churches. It is not easy to get people to take it up—some are proud. I have raised my voice with elderly ladies who have said it is charity, and told them, “No, it’s not. It’s not charity—we don’t think you can live without it.” We have tried very hard.

Hundreds of worried constituents have written to me about heating their homes. We have lots of low energy efficiency homes, including one of the biggest park home sites in the country, and I have many park home sites. Fortunately, we managed to find £2.5 million from the previous Government to retrofit some of them, but we still have a lot of people living in fuel-inefficient homes that are hard to retrofit. The worry that this is causing people is the biggest issue I see now, and it shows how out of touch and arrogant the Labour Government are that they do not understand this about pensioners. People who are 75 and on a fixed income may have a little bit of savings or a modest private pension—

[Patrick Spencer]

I think all hon. Members are very disappointed not to see a proper impact analysis of this decision. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to analyse the impact of such a policy is to speak to the people who sent us to this place, as she is saying, and to hear the utter fear and concern they have about its impact?

[Rebecca Harris]

My hon. Friend is spot on. It is the anxiety that it causes people. They do not know if they will live another 18 months or 25 years. People on fixed incomes, with no ability to raise that income, are very worried about spending money. There is also a large and, sadly, growing cohort of elderly residents who are developing dementia, and one of the early symptoms, often, is financial anxiety, including in people whom we would think of as really quite wealthy. I have known residents who have regressed to thinking that they are still living under rationing because they grew up as a lad in abject poverty, and they will not spend money. Being told, “Here’s £300 for fuel,” makes a world of difference to those people.

I was not a fan of Gordon Brown, who once gave a derisory 75p increase to pensioners, but this policy was a huge success—credit to him. That is why my Government never changed it. For £300 for every pensioner, we give incredible peace of mind that they can put their heating on—

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

Does my hon. Friend worry, as I do, that some of our constituents will die this year as a result of this policy?

[Rebecca Harris]

I do not think that I need to worry; I think we know that will happen, because we know about their behaviour and their concerns about putting the heating on, and their lack of understanding of how much every heating bill will cost them. This £300 was psychologically very important to knowing that they could put their heating on to keep them healthy and out of hospital. Of all the tough decisions that we had to consider when we came into office in 2010, when there was no magicked-up, home-made £22 billion black hole excuse—there was a vast deficit and we had to make a lot of tough decisions—we never made this one.