A charity has said the fight for a rethink on the Winter Fuel Payment is not over. Age UK has been heading the call to get the Labour government to ditch its plans to make the cash only available to those on certain means-tested benefits.
Thousands of people have already written to MPs and signed a petition organised by the charity urging them to reconsider and continue making the payment available to all pensioners. And now they are urging anyone who hasn’t already done it to do so.
Many of them wrote ahead of a vote in Parliament calling for the move to be scrapped. Despite some Labour MPs voting with the opposition to seek the ending of the plan it still failed to get it overturned.
But in an email to supporters Eorann of Age UK Campaigns said the fight wasn’t over. She said: “While I’m disappointed that the Government won the vote to continue their plans, I’m not giving up.
“There is still a lot of opposition to this change. There have been 4 debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords so far and the campaign has been raised two weeks in a row at Prime Ministers Questions and there have been a huge number of parliamentary questions.
“I’ve also met dozens of MPs from all parties and will be meeting even more over this Party Conference season. Nearly every time the Winter Fuel Payment has been discussed in Parliament, politicians have mentioned the emails they’ve been receiving and the number of people that have signed the petition.
“That’s why I’ve decided to keep the petition open for longer. More signatures on the petition mean more attention.
“As the Budget approaches in the next few weeks, we will be pushing hard for the Government to change its approach and provide support to those who need it. After all, they still have a responsibility to struggling pensioners.
“This campaign certainly isn’t over. So please do write to your MP to ask them to urge the Chancellor to reconsider. Every extra email adds more weight to the campaign.”
The annual tax-free payment of between £100 and £300 was introduced in 1997 to help eligible pensioners meet the costs of heating their homes in winter. Previously all people over State Pension age qualified for the money. Those aged between 66 and 79 got £200 while 80s and over received £300.
The government has insisted the poorest pensioners will still get the money. Most people will access it through Pension Credit eligibility.
But Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK said while the Government repeatedly said that the poorest pensioners will keep their Winter Fuel Payment through being eligible for Pension Credit an official document showed an estimated three quarters of a million older people on the lowest incomes will not claim the benefit this year. She said this meant they “will go into this winter without the Payment, at the same time as energy prices are rising by 10%”.
She said: “The partial impact analysis also finds that pensioners aged over 80 will lose the most financially through the means-testing of Winter Fuel Payment, and that seven in 10 disabled pensioners will no longer receive it.”
She added: “Right from the start, Age UK has said that we are incredibly worried that means-testing Winter Fuel Payment will make poor pensioners poorer this winter, and that many sick and disabled pensioners will also lose the Payment when they can ill afford to do so. Sadly, this Government document comes to exactly the same conclusion.
“In the light of this information we believe the Government is duty bound to bring forward additional measures at the Budget to safeguard the poor, sick and disabled pensioners who their own analysis shows will lose their Winter Fuel Payment this year and who will clearly struggle as a result – this or court disaster when the weather chills. We estimate that about two and a half million older people are in this position overall.
“Age UK would be happy to work with the Treasury and the Department of Work and Pensions to put together the most effective package. The Government’s immediate response to these revelations has been to seek to rely on the rise in the State Pension this year and next as justification for a policy change which its own analysis now shows will hurt millions of pensioners who are poor, sick and disabled.
“However, it’s important to understand that older people aged over 80, the hardest hit group of all according to their own projections, have not and will not receive the full rise that Government spokespeople are referring to because they are on an older form of the State Pension. It is only younger pensioners on the full State Pension – again not all of them – who will gain the full amount.”