Your support helps us to tell the story
Health secretary Wes Streeting has suggested pensioners will not be the only group negatively affected by cuts in the October budget.
Mr Streeting said he can understand why pensioners may feel they are being targeted by the government following cuts to winter fuel payments. However, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said there will be moves to reduce the size of the welfare bill, as well as public spending cuts and tax rises.
In an interview with The New Statesman, the health secretary said: “I can understand why there will be some pensioners sat there thinking, ‘Why us? And what about others?
“Well, there are other choices to come and these aren’t just Rachel’s [Reeves] choices to face up to, these are the choices of the whole government.”
He added: “It would be quite jarring if we were all skipping around Whitehall singing Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come or D:Ream’s Things Can Only Better at the same as we’re dealing with a £22 billion black hole and making some tough choices which are really sticking in the throats of people, particularly on the winter fuel allowance.”
