Winter fuel payments for all pensioners were, according to Gordon Brown, one of the greatest achievements of the last Labour administration. It was the bitterly cold winter during the miners’ strike that brought home to him the disastrous effects that means testing had on elderly people. New Labour lifted more than a million pensioners out of relative poverty. It is odd that the next Labour prime minister seems intent on repudiating that legacy.
Sir Keir Starmer wants to do away with the “untargeted” payments – worth up to £300 – from 10 million pensioners, when energy bills rise by 10%, to save the Treasury £1.4bn. This is mean, unjust and politically inept. There is widespread disquiet in Labour, which traditionally argues that universalism matters for poverty prevention because it generates public support for welfare spending. An early day motion asking for the change to be reconsidered has been organised by newly elected centrist MPs. Others say that withdrawing winter fuel payments for those in fuel poverty will lead to excess deaths.
