Rachel Reeves has announced that winter fuel payments will only be paid to those on Pension Credit.nsion Credit

I will add that I do not starve and eat quite well with the food I buy but I know for certain that come winter, I will be cutting down on heating my home because without the WFA there is no way I can afford to have the heating on all day long. If I had a bus I could go on to the shopping centres, I could spend a few hours there and save having to put the heating on in my house but I don't have a bus as my bus route has been cancelled.

I refuse to cut down on my eating as I need food to survive but I will buy cheaper brands in future so that there will be more money in the pot for heating my home.

We will have to do our best to survive this coming winter.

HattieTopper
www.channel5.com/show/supermarket-own-brands-the-big-taste-test

There are 18 weeks between now and the 1st December. If you put away £5 per week, you’ll have saved £90 by then. The WFA was £100 (I realise it was higher for those over 80).

Next year you’ll only need to put away £2 per week.

maddyone

There were many on here claiming that they were voting Labour because they were voting for the poor. I wonder who those people thought the poor are, because it’s clear from this site that many of the poor are pensioners, particularly female pensioners. Even now we’ve got posters proclaiming they’re happy that much money is going abroad to help poor people abroad, forgetting that poor pensioners need our help too. Personally I think we should help poor people abroad, but absolutely not at the cost of people who have worked and paid taxes all their lives and will now suffer the cold this coming winter. We had stopped seeing news reports of elderly people dying of hyperthermia many years ago, but this is what we will be seeing again very soon. We were told by Labour that there would be hard choices, but up to now it seems to me, that the only group who have been singled out to suffer any hard choices are the pensioners. I don’t need to wait till the budget to see what Labour are like, I’ve seen it this week.

I know, and am grinding my teeth and hoping Labour will go back on this as being behind those with the least in society is part of what Labour used to stand for.
I realise that even the very well off got this benefit but there could be a cut off point in earnings say at £50,000 or £40,000 or even less over which pensioners don’t receive the WFA.

LizzieDrip

There are 18 weeks between now and the 1st December. If you put away £5 per week, you’ll have saved £90 by then. The WFA was £100 (I realise it was higher for those over 80).

Next year you’ll only need to put away £2 per week.

Gee thanks🤬

LizzieDrip

There are 18 weeks between now and the 1st December. If you put away £5 per week, you’ll have saved £90 by then. The WFA was £100 (I realise it was higher for those over 80).

Next year you’ll only need to put away £2 per week.

Oh dear.

Do you really think Pensioners on the lowest incomes have £5 to put away each week?

Labour is in no way a party for the poor. I would say it's become quite a middle class party.

LizzieDrip the WFA is £200 per household, not £100. If you’re part of a couple, you got £100 each, but a single person would get £200. Or £300 if over eighty!

As I said before, many who are defending this action, and were constantly telling us they were voting Labour for the poor, haven’t got the first clue about pensioner poverty, nor poverty in general actually because as has just been shown they don’t even know how much the WFA was.
Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

Callistemon213

... you need an after tax (net) income of £49,700 in order to live comfortably in the UK as a couple, or £67,554 for a family with 2 parents and 2 children. This figure is based on studies conducted by the Pensions & Lifetime Savings Association and the Child Poverty Action Group.
3 Mar 2024

I was feeling comfortable, after a lifetime of working, bringing up children and penny-pinching, until I read that!

Same here. DH and I live very comfortably on a lot less than £49k. Who on earth are they including in their survey, you have to wonder!

For anyone interested in the history of the Winter Fuel Payment, this document from 2019 is worth reading:

researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06019/SN06019.pdf

I do think it highlights change that was already under consideration in early 2010 … and then we had a change of government - Labour to Tory - for another fourteen years:

Page 18 onwards in most relevant - Section 7 Criticisms of the Winter Fuel Payment

As a means of tackling fuel poverty, the case for Winter Fuel Payments is weak. Its payment is unfocused and not targeted on people in or near fuel poverty. However, as a universal means of supplementing pensioner incomes, which is easily understood and easy to pay, the political case for the retention of Winter Fuel Payments is strong. However, it would be more intellectually honest to rename the benefit; concede that it a general income supplement; and stop accounting for it as a fuel poverty measure.

(Obviously we can argue that, three years later, fuel poverty did become a real issue but for everyone and the government of the day took steps to alleviate that.)

It is worth noting (page 9) that when WFA was first introduced there was an additional payment for people in receipt of means tested benefits:

The Winter Fuel Payment was £20 (or £50 for those in receipt of means- tested benefits) when first introduced in winter 1997/1998.

Now I am wondering to what extent Reeves has gone back to the thinking expressed in this briefing to do arguable what was on the cards fourteen year ago.

I can draw an analogy between what happened with State Pension age equalisation. This was subject of an EU Directive in 1978 but there was a change of goverment soon afterwards - Labour to Tory who did not legislated for it until seventeen years later in 1995.

Echoing what Doodledog said: In RR's shoes I would not have done this the way she has done it …

I agree. Another year to allow people to budget would not have made a great deal of difference - but I would suggest that overall she is making a decision that the previous government had ducked.

We know that the Tories relied on the votes of older people. Despite fourteen years of mismanagement, 46% of older people still voted Tory earlier this month.

During the election, Sunak was trying to appease older voters but promising a tax age allowance to offset the effects of the fiscal drag that he had created by freezing tax personal allowances 2021. It’s worth remembering that a tax age allowance was introduced by Labour in 1975 but was phased out by the Tories from 2013/14 - so Sunak was only promising to reinstate what his party has previously taken away.

It remains to be seen whether Reeves may do something in the Autumn to address the difficulties that fiscal drag will create over the coming years - the possibilty that a substantial number of pensioners will have to self-assess as there is no mechanism to tax state pension at source in isolation.

Blinko

Callistemon213

... you need an after tax (net) income of £49,700 in order to live comfortably in the UK as a couple, or £67,554 for a family with 2 parents and 2 children. This figure is based on studies conducted by the Pensions & Lifetime Savings Association and the Child Poverty Action Group.
3 Mar 2024

I was feeling comfortable, after a lifetime of working, bringing up children and penny-pinching, until I read that!

Same here. DH and I live very comfortably on a lot less than £49k. Who on earth are they including in their survey, you have to wonder!

Agreed.

I wonder what percentage of pensioners have nearly £50k after tax? Maybe it depends on where you set the level of 'comfort'? My yacht could do with a makeover, but we've decided to make do this year and reline the moat instead.

Apologies, didn’t know that a single person got £200.

Just trying to look for solutions🤷‍♀️

I agree with those who know Labour is not a party for the poor. They are very much like the Tories. The Labour party did look after those in society who were struggling but that was long ago.

Labour promised over the years never to cut Pensioner benefits… didn’t take long to break that promise. It will cause real problems for some who Theresa May called ‘just about managing’ It would be really good to get some politicians with integrity for a change. Every party always claims that the previous Government leaves finances in a mess.

Anybody who feels this is wrong or are going to struggle financially because of this new policy could e-mail their MP stating their reasons why and politely put how disappointed they are and it could influence their voting next election. If enough people do this all over the country it may be raised in Parliament and repealed. We have a lot of new young MPs who are wanting to make a name for themselves and want a long stay as MP.

I agree!

It must be awful to miss out on a benefit by a small amount of money. The Winter Fuel Allowance must have made a big difference for some.

I appreciate that I'm very lucky in not needing this payment and I've always been in favour of only issuing it to those in need. However only giving it to those on benefits is very unfair as some of the above posters have said and I think it will mean a lot of worry and hardship for many people. It's a substantial sum that can make a lot of difference.
I also think a lot of the charities will now lose out as like many others I have always donated my fuel allowance to a couple of charities. I just wonder what will come next.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I felt like crying when I heard this. I worked out that if I’m widowed I will be £1 over the limit. Even though married this money meant that we could put the heating on when we needed it and had the money to pay for it. This coming winter we won’t. The Pension Credit limit is far too low and many of us who are just outside it will suffer. Let’s hope nobody dies from cold thanks to this government.

It's unbelievable how smug some people are on this site. "I'm all right Jack, pull up the ladder" springs to mind!

I haven't read all the comments, so someone else may have said this.
Why hasn't the WFP been a taxable benefit? Those on really low incomes wouldn't have paid tax on it. Maybe fiscal drag would have changed that.
But the Chancellor would have got a fair bit back without penalising the poorest.

Well that's blinking obvious - the money is going/has gone to the unions to ensure that they continue to support the Labour party. All those junior doctors, who did not become doctors because they wanted to help others, but knew that it was a highly paid and secure job for a lifetime willl be feeling very smug.

Meanwhile , as I suspect that i wont qualify for the heating payment, I'd better start trying to save - not easy when all prices seem to be rising.

My post was referring to the question - where is the money going - i.e. winter payments, but somehow I didn't include the other person;s post

Better still, stop all the money going abroad, and all the money being given to the illegals