Petition to save the winter fuel payment

I won’t sign because so many pensioners do not need WFA. I would prefer the basic pension to be raised. Those of us with work or private pensions would pay more tax, to the benefit of others.
The main problem is we have the lowest pension in Europe and other countries like Australia. I’d sign a petition demanding increase in basic pension

Iam64

I won’t sign because so many pensioners do not need WFA. I would prefer the basic pension to be raised. Those of us with work or private pensions would pay more tax, to the benefit of others.
The main problem is we have the lowest pension in Europe and other countries like Australia. I’d sign a petition demanding increase in basic pension

My sister in Brisbane gets no state pension at all, they are not rich but savings are above the pension threshold.

I’ve signed it for my Mum, I feel a u turn by RR will be made at the budget.

I think that's a possibility, or at least that mitigation will be put in place. This has been so unpopular from all sides, and for all sorts of reasons. I appreciate that a U turn would be humiliating so soon after taking office, so I'm more inclined to think that something else will replace it, but time will tell.

There has to be a balance between keeping people warm and fed, and encouraging people to save what they can (or at least not disincentivising it). Being Chancellor is not a job I would relish. It's always robbing Peter to pay Paul, and whatever decisions are made are guaranteed to be unpopular with the losers.

Like many others, I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, lucky people like me, financially secure with two pensions, or the wealthy, should not be getting the WFP. I give mine to Age Concern (sorry if that sounds like virtue signalling).

On the other hand, the threshold for Pension Supplement is far too low so that far too many pensioners are caught in a poverty trap and having to choose between eating and heating. In other words the whole system is in need of an urgent review.

David49 The Australian system seems a bit unfair to me, assuming that working Australians have to pay for state pensions for the elderly. Savings are often result from people going without and not splashing their cash on expensive holidays, gambling, cars, booze and fags.

It’s their system if you have spare cash you pay in into health insurance and pensions, at least they don’t have to worry much about winter fuel in Brisbane.

David49

It’s their system if you have spare cash you pay in into health insurance and pensions, at least they don’t have to worry much about winter fuel in Brisbane.

That's missing the point I think Indigo is making. Whether or not people have savings in older age can simply be a result of the amount they earned when younger, inheritance or luck in the housing market, but sometimes it is as a result of frugality borne of a fear of poverty - as Indigo says, going without expensive holidays etc. When this self-denial ends up pricing people out of pensions (or other things) that are given freely to those who spent as they earned, it can cause resentment.