Labour MPs who missed a controversial vote on removing the winter fuel payment from most pensioners have been stripped of potential privileges and warned about their future conduct, the Guardian has been told.
While the sanctions have caused some anger, with one of the MPs calling the whips’ behaviour “feudal”, the overall response to the rebellion has been seemingly less severe than in July, when seven MPs lost the Labour whip for rebelling.
Those MPs had the whip suspended for six months for voting in favour of an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit limit.
However, the one Labour MP who voted in favour of last Tuesday’s opposition-forced motion to block the change to winter fuel payments, Jon Trickett, appears to have kept the party whip. Neither Trickett nor the government whips’ office has commented since the vote. However, he is still listed on the official parliamentary website as a Labour MP, meaning any sanction against him was apparently less stringent.
A total of 52 Labour MPs did not vote on the winter fuel payment motion, but government sources said that all but 12 of these had been given prior permission to miss the vote. The whips’ response to those who failed to vote without permission has been, in several cases, to send a letter saying their future behaviour would be monitored and that they would be denied privileges, such as help to get places on select committees. The rebels were told they should raise any future worries with the whips’ office or ministers.
It has emerged that whips also warned Labour MPs that they were not allowed to discuss the winter fuel vote and its aftermath with journalists.
The scale of Labour disquiet over the decision to block the annual winter fuel payment of either £200 or £300, depending on age, to all pensioners except those with the lowest incomes, is known to be significantly wider than the 12 MPs who abstained without permission.
A number of backbenchers who had publicly opposed the policy were given permission to miss the vote, with some saying whips had even encouraged them to find a reason to be absent.
Some cabinet ministers had also privately expressed significant concerns about the decision to remove the payment from all pensioners who do not claim income-based benefits such as pension credit, which was announced by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, in July.
One MP who received the whips’ letter said they felt it had misjudged the depth of feeling over the issue: “Quite frankly, the letter is feudal and completely misplaced when people are abstaining to protect very vulnerable people.”
After the vote, Downing Street said that the decision over the payment had been made without a specific impact assessment on repercussions such as the potential effect on illness and death rates among older people.
A No 10 spokesperson said government departments were not obliged under law to carry out specific impact assessments of policies that cost less than £10m to implement.
A more limited equalities assessment, which is required under law, was released by the government on Friday evening. It said that about 780,000 older people in England and Wales were expected to not claim the benefits they are entitled to, and thus also miss out on the winter fuel payment.
The government whips’ office and Trickett were contacted for comment.
