Consumer finance expert Martin Lewis launched an impassioned plea on Thursday for Chancellor Rachel Reeves to look again at her “dangerous” plan to restrict winter fuel payments for pensioners.
Mr Lewis, who is due to meet Ms Reeves next week at his request, said he agreed with her that the £300 payment no longer needs to be universal.
“Millionaires don’t need it. But I think the means testing is too tight and it is ineffective because of those people who won’t claim Pension Credit,” he said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Instead, Mr Lewis urged the Government to give it to every pensioner living in a property in Council Tax bands A-C, which he said would reach 70% of those eligible and still save the Treasury £900 million.
From mid-September, only those receiving Pension Credit or other means-tested benefits will be eligible for the payment in England and Wales as a result of the Government’s decision.
Ms Reeves calculates that it will save around £1.5 billion this year to help plug a £22bn “black hole” that she says she inherited from the Tories.
Mr Lewis said he had been campaigning for years until he was “blue in the face” for more older people on low incomes to claim the top-up Pension Credit to which they are entitled, but some 880,000 were still going without it.
He said Pension Credit on average adds £3,900 to a retiree’s annual income, and also acts as a “gateway” to a host of other benefits from free TV licences for over 75s to housing benefit and help for dental and optician bills.
But it remained frustratingly hard to get everyone who is entitled to sign up.
“We are going to have, just to be really plain, pensioners on less than £11,400 a year income, nearly a million of them, won't get the £300 for their energy this winter,” the expert said.
“And that is a dangerous situation.”
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer said the Government was only reluctantly introducing means-testing for the payment, and stressed the “triple-lock” would see pensions overall go up by more.
But he was met with shouts of “shame” from Conservative MPs, as Tory leader Rishi Sunak asked why the PM had decided to boost the pay of train drivers earning £65,000 a year while a pensioner living on £13,000 annually would lose their winter fuel payment.
Defending the plan, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said on Thursday that the Government would not “play fast and loose” with the nation’s finances.
She told BBC Breakfast: “We have to make sure that we can fiscally be responsible, so that we can grow our economy, so that we can pay for our public services.
“And we said that in the run-up to the General Election. What we didn’t realise is that absolute mess the Tories had left the… state of the finances, and we’re having to make difficult decisions.”
Ms Rayner said the Government was taking action to support pensioners, with the Household Support Fund extended to “help people who maybe are not entitled to Pension Credit, who are just above that threshold, who may struggle this winter”.
