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

Exactly David

Elusivebutterfly

The Government website says that the average single female pensioner's income is £259 per week. These are the people who will be badly affected by removing the winter fuel allowance.
I am not suggesting we should cut Child Benefit, but that is only cut for those with a household income above £60,000 a year. Why not cut winter fuel payment for pensioner households with a similar income? Leave those of us low incomes alone.

Probably a good idea, but too costly to administer ( we don’t want money wasted).
The Child Benefit cap is organised through the PAYE and tax systems.

We all knew the Tories were going to leave a lot of debt, Reeves is really rattled that it is more than she expected, she has settled the public sector pay disputes and cancelled unfunded projects.
So far, there will be more to come.

Casdon

I don’t know what it is that’s eluding people about the fact that the Tory Governments over the last 14 years have virtually wrecked the UK, we are in dire straits.
The winter fuel allowance was introduced by Gordon Brown, this won’t have been an easy decision for Rachel Reeves. When will people understand that we can’t have the penny and the bun?

Keeping the WFA only for those in receipt of certain benefits keeps the cost of administration down. The cost of means testing benefits has often been used as an argument for universal benefits
I’m stunned by comments here criticising this decision, from posters who don’t ‘need’ wfa.

The Government website says that the average single female pensioner's income is £259 per week. These are the people who will be badly affected by removing the winter fuel allowance.
I am not suggesting we should cut Child Benefit, but that is only cut for those with a household income above £60,000 a year. Why not cut winter fuel payment for pensioner households with a similar income? Leave those of us low incomes alone.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that the reforms, includingan £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England has to spend on their personal care over their lifetime, will not happen in October next year. (Daily Mail)

I don’t know what it is that’s eluding people about the fact that the Tory Governments over the last 14 years have virtually wrecked the UK, we are in dire straits.
The winter fuel allowance was introduced by Gordon Brown, this won’t have been an easy decision for Rachel Reeves. When will people understand that we can’t have the penny and the bun?

Juggernaut

Lots of us said 'be careful what you wish for'.
Seems that we did actually know what we were talking about!

Spot on there. 👏👏

I believe I left a post around election time saying “mark my words, we are going to be much worse off.”

I don’t actually need the winter fuel allowance but just like the Child Benefit it was not means tested. Every mother on here would have received that whether they were rich or poor. When I got Family Allowance as it was then called, we hadn’t got two pennies to rub together by Monday morning so I was first in the PO queue!

J52

Nicenanny3

Nevermind we are giving 86 million to Africa.

Or the Tories giving upwards of £250 million to Rwanda.

For many the Winter Fuel payment was just a bonus, not really needed and some did donate it to a charity. As with the Christmas £10.
Unfortunately with most benefits there will be a cut off and those above will feel aggrieved.
My hope is that further down the line money will be found to help those in need of health care, dental care, decent public services and to reduce bills.

I apologise for not having read the entire thread but I was so relieved to see another poster who reflected my views.
We had a poster recently stating, accurately , that many forum contributors own houses worth over £1m. I’m not one of them by the way.
For many the winter fuel allowance was not needed. Mine went to a family member in need, then to charity.

Is it poor Rachel Reeves who barely manages on around £91K year? I wonder how much of a % increase they will be giving to themselves?

I agree that the 25% discount if living alone will be next but please give us a week to absorb this.

Surely we do not need free bus passes when we can shuffle to the local library to keep warm.

Thankfully I did not vote for them but they are more underhand than I had envisaged.

GrannyGravy13

Ladyleftfieldlover

I honestly think Rachel Reeves is genuinely very annoyed at the state of the country’s finances. I don’t think you can say that Labour don’t like pensioners! I’m sorry that some GNs will suffer because of the decision on fuel allowance being limited to those on various benefits. Sadly there has to be a line drawn and there will always be people caught just in the wrong place. Don’t despise Labour yet.

Don’ t make excuses for RR

She knows this will cause hardship, and doesn’t give a fig.

It will cause hardship to some. Some will continue to winter in Spain, enjoy spa breaks and increase the rent for their tenants.

I,ve been saying for years that Labour were just tories in red rosettes.Seems I was right,austerity is an ideal not a necessity as most of us know after the last 14 years of Tory rule

Primrose53

Freya5

Well well, true colours here. Not surprised one iota.
Glad I didn't vote for this lot.
Yet they can send 84 billion pounds to Africa, and Middle East,oil rich nations.

Precisely Freya👏👏

Yes but they’ve taking it out of the savings by not sending anymore payments to Rwanda, for nothing other than the Tory MPs jolly to see where Rwanda was.

Freya5

Well well, true colours here. Not surprised one iota.
Glad I didn't vote for this lot.
Yet they can send 84 billion pounds to Africa, and Middle East,oil rich nations.

Precisely Freya👏👏

I think they’re worse, at least in the last year we received help with our fuel bills etc. Imo this Labour government are going to look after the young with an eye to future voters!!

I think they've set the bar too low.

Nicenanny3

Labour showing their true colours. Yet come over on a dinghy having paid not a penny in and get free accommodation lovely and warm as well I would guess in winter, free food, pocket money, extra money if you are pregnant, extra money for each child etc etc. Wonderbar.

Whats a wonderbra got to do with anything?

Well, the previous chancellor has already admitted that he was promising tax cuts that he couldn’t afford.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Has anyone read the IFS report?
This explains it.

ifs.org.uk/articles/ifs-response-rachel-reeves-spending-audit

Rachel Reeves is within her rights to feel somewhat aggrieved. It was always clear and obvious that the spending plans she inherited were incompatible with Labour’s ambitions for public services, and that more cash would be required eventually. But the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside, which only adds to the scale of the problem …

Nonetheless, some of the specifics are indeed shocking, and raise some difficult questions for the last government. If the scale of these overspends and spending pressures was apparent in the spring – and in lots of cases, there’s no reason to suppose otherwise – then it is hard to understand why they weren’t made clear or dealt with in the spring budget. Jeremy Hunt’s £10bn cut to national insurance looks ever less defensible. On asylum costs, the decision to effectively stop processing claimants, and to budget virtually nothing for the resultant costs of housing them, looks like very poor policy making. The new chancellor is right to be cross.

MayBee70

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people on here have said over the years that it’s wrong that the winter fuel payment is given to everyone and many people don’t need it. Hopefully there will be an advertising campaign pointing out that many people don’t realise they are eligible for pension credit?

RR also said that the Government were going to work with Charities and Local Authorities to identify people who were not claiming the benefits they were entitled to. Quite right.
It would seem that the Labour government are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t.
Do the people who are complaining really want winter fuel thousands to given to folks that don’t really need it?

Lots of us said 'be careful what you wish for'.
Seems that we did actually know what we were talking about!

rafichagran

crazyH

I personally think that the Winter Fuel Payment should be paid to those on a low income. I agree with Rachel Reeves, and with the OP

Yes course you do, you can probably afford it. I will now lose mine as I get the new state pension, minus a small amount, because I get a occ pen. I am not a wealthy pensioner but I jog along. The WFA allowance was welcome.
There are alot of Jack's on here, wealthy and can afford to lose it. I have osteo arthritis although I get around OK, it is worse in the cold so I put my heating on. The allowance helps.
My sympathy goes to the people that are just above the limit for pension credit.

The problem is that many of those who will lose the Fuel Allowance will be those who are only just above the limit to receive it, are often older people on the Old State Pension plus a small occupational pension and may be more immobile (not necessarily ill), spending more time at home and worrying themselves about how to keep themselves warm.

I am ashamed of them
I'm ashamed I voted for them.

This is a benefits calculator.
Maybe it's of use to some people?

www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/benefits-entitlements/benefits-calculator/

Age UK has easy explanations about most of this.

‘It was a grand promise - a Boris Johnson classic - “We’re going to build 40 new hospitals over the next decade”. The image was clear for all: 40 brand new, shiny, state-of-the-art hospitals - treating patients, caring for our loved ones, saving lives - signed, sealed and delivered by 2030.

Then the promise started to unravel - another Boris Johnson classic. Well the hospitals wouldn’t all be ‘new’, they might just be refurbishments. And when we say ‘a hospital’, we don’t actually mean a whole hospital, it might just be a new building. Oh, and when we say ‘over the next decade’, we don’t actually mean there’ll be a new hospital by 2030.

This broken failure, this failure to deliver, has continued with three Conservative Prime Ministers, six Conservative Health Secretaries. The National Audit Office has warned that the Government will not meet its manifesto pledge. Only 10 out of the 40 new hospitals have received full planning permission and several projects have no planning permission at all. The Government has not even allocated enough funding to ensure all the hospitals in the New Hospitals Programme will be built.’

Isn’t she just cancelling a lot of hospitals that were never going to be built anyway? At a time when existing hospitals were in urgent need of repair.