Winter Fuel Payment
Seamus Logan Excerpts(3 days, 5 hours ago)
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Sarah Olney
I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. He makes an important point, although I would say that I welcomed the Chancellor’s commitment last week to work with older people’s charities and local authorities to raise awareness of pension credit. None the less, he is exactly right that many people will have this benefit taken away without knowing that there is pension credit for which they are eligible and should claim.
As the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has highlighted, the DWP has assumed that the uptake of pension credit will increase by just five percentage points, and that will still exclude around 700,000 pensioners. Have the Government made a proper assessment of what the impact will be if uptake of pension credits increases by more than that amount? I continue to call for assurance that the Government will ensure that all those eligible for pension credit claim both the benefit itself and the winter fuel payment.
We will be voting against the scrapping of this stream of support for pensioners. Although we recognise that the Government face difficult choices given the appalling mess left by the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats will continue to advocate for the necessity of winter fuel payments. The mismanagement of our economy by the outgoing Conservative Government has left formidable challenges and we understand that undoing that damage will not be easy.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
Whatever fiscal pressures are being addressed here today, we have heard about the additional deaths that could possibly result from this measure. Does the hon. Member share my disgust at some Members celebrating the result of the previous vote as if it were a football match?
Sarah Olney
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I am afraid that I cannot comment because I did not see that, but I thank him for raising it.
It is not right for the consequences of the decisions of the outgoing Conservative Government and this burden to be carried by some of the most vulnerable in our society. Those with the broadest shoulders should carry a heavier burden. Liberal Democrats have set out detailed proposals to tackle fuel poverty and we are calling on the Government to look at them very seriously. That includes steps such as: launching an emergency home energy upgrade programme, with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households; introducing a social tariff for the most vulnerable to provide targeted energy discounts for vulnerable households; and implementing a proper windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers and traders, to raise vital revenue. We have also called on the Government to tackle the wider cost of living crisis, including by investing an extra £1 billion a year in our farmers to bring down food prices, increasing the carer’s allowance and expanding it to more carers, and removing the two-child limit and the benefit cap.
More than 2 million pensioners are currently living in poverty. They have had a tremendously difficult time during the cost of living crisis, dealing with record high energy bills and eye-watering food costs. That is why the Liberal Democrats are proud to have introduced the triple lock when we were in government, lifting countless vulnerable pensioners out of poverty, and why we are strongly committed to ensuring it remains in place. Pensioners deserve to have the support and the security of knowing that the triple lock will be there in the long term.
We acknowledge the dire economic situation the new Government have inherited, yet we have heard warning calls from sector representatives, including Age UK, Disability Rights UK and many pensioners themselves, regarding the damage that this cut might cause. As the Government try to clear up the Conservative party’s mess, they must ensure that that does not come at the expense of pensioners and families who will struggle to heat their homes this winter.
Public Spending: Inheritance
Seamus Logan Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Let us just be clear that the pay recommendations today are in line with private sector pay. These are just the pay deals that are received by the majority of workers in the private sector. My hon. Friend is right that we owe a debt of gratitude to our frontline workers, who got us through the pandemic and so many other challenges over the last few years, and they deserve to be paid properly for their work.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
During the recent election campaign, we in the SNP repeatedly warned about an £18 billion hole in the Labour party’s spending plans. Now that the Chancellor has confirmed that today, will she apologise to those voters in Scotland who supported the Labour party leader in Scotland when he said:
“Read my lips, no austerity”?
Will she also reverse the 9% cut in Scotland’s capital allocation, please?
Rachel Reeves
I am not sure if hon. Gentleman was paying attention. The £22 billion black hole is this year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies was warning about a black hole of £18 billion over the lifetime of the Parliament. Those are two very different things and both of them can be true. What we are showing today is an in-year gap of £22 billion that the hon. Gentleman did not know about, that no one on this side of the House knew about, that the OBR did not know about, and that the country did not know about. This is new information that is being published today, above and beyond what anyone knew when we were campaigning in the election.