Early evening summary
All pensioners with an income of £35,000 or less a year will have the winter fuel payment restored in full, Rachel Reeves has announced, after weeks of uncertainty over the decision to make a U-turn on scrapping the benefit. The move was welcomed by all the main opposition parties in the Commons, although some said the government should have apologised for cutting the benefit in the first place last year. But, in a classic example of how political consensus at Westminster does not always overlap with what is seen by experts as wise policy making, Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, told the PM programme that he did not think today’s announcement was a good one. He said he thought cutting the benefit last year was a “sensible” policy in the first place and that restoring the benefit for most pensioners in this manner was not a sound use of public money. He explained:
It wouldn’t even be in the top 100 of things that I would do with my £1.25bn if I wanted to act on poverty. Almost none of the people impacted by this will be in poverty. Most of them will be at least as well off as the average in the population.
We know that poverty is much worse among families with children than it is with pensioners, and of course the poorest pensioners are already getting this - they are covered through the pension credit system.
Johnson also said the net savings to the taxpayer would be “so small as to be barely visible.” But – crucially – he also admitted that the IFS does not have to stand for election.
For a full list of all the stories covered here today, scroll through the key events timeline at the top of the blog.
Updated
This is from Patrick Maguire from the Times on Nigel Farage’s speech today.
There was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash of Blairism in Farage’s speech in Wales earlier: asking big employers to sponsor specialist vocational academies.
