U turn on winter fuel payments- is it a good move?

Silverbrooks

There always was dissent from Labour MPs but many of them were only newly-elected when Sunak forced the vote last September.

Some were seen crying in the lobbies whipped into voting for something they thought was wrong. The only one who defied the whip was Jon Trickett.

A reminder of what happened:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/17/labour-mps-missed-winter-fuel-vote-feudal-warning-by-whips

Almost a year on, those new MPs will have found confidence and allies enough to make a stand against what was always wrong.

Starmer not Sunak 😃

I can never understand why they did it Silverbrooks it filled me with dismay that a newly elected Labour government could have done something like that!

This won't be straightforward as people are taxed individually while the WFP is paid to a household.

Further complications will arise in a three or more pensioner household. It's not so uncommon to have a pensioner parent living with a pensioner child and their pensioner partner or some combination of.

DWP already tell HMRC what State Pension someone receives.

The fine tuning needs to be done but if a cut off date is set to opt out (more admin) then by April 2026, DWP should have been able to tell HMRC who has been paid what so that payment can be clawed back.

It's still a lot of extra work. Although I do think it's a decent compromise it would have been far simpler and cost effective to leave things as they were before last July and for the Treasury to take the extra tax yield from people spending the money in the general economy - which they have been doing for the last 24+ years or donating the payment to charity as many did.

AFAIK, nobody has quantified the loss to Christmas charity appeals.

What a mess and huge fuss that could have been avoided.

I apologise for misquoting you Oreo. The word that you used yesterday for those not seeing this as you do was " stupid "

Exactly, stupid to think it was anything else but a bad press for a year and a fear of Reform and unrest from the backbenches.
But do go ahead and post your own comments on why they decided to bring back the WFA up to an income of £35,000 before tax.

Oreo

Of course it wouldn’t.I was just pointing out that if you don’t do self assessment now you won’t need to in the future.
It will be clawed back.

My misunderstanding. I thought you were implying that those people would get away with paying back their WFA.

It was Sunak. It was a Prayer against a Negative Statutory Instrument sponsored by Sunak and signed by 81 Tories.

Motion text

That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 (S.I., 2024, No. 869), dated 22 August 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 22 August 2024, be annulled.

This was the vote:

Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 869): motion to annul

228 Ayes, 348 Noes - all Labour because they were whipped:

votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1840

I was born in the war, one if the lucky ones, no money but no one had, lots of jobs about when i left school at 15, worked hard and got my first house when i married at 19, always had a couple of jobs on the go. Youngsters now lucky to get a job lots on nil contracts, its not fair on them, I have my state pension I paid into all my life, so hardly well off, but can manage without heating allowance as most can. We should be helping the young. A lot of pensioners just moan. The people at fault are the government anyone on low pay and working should not pay tax until they earn 20k.the people on very high wages should pay more. Stop immigration until our people here have homes, it is plain stupid just letting people in. Illegals should go back along with any offspring, anyone here that doesn't learn English can't work so they are a drain on those working. Its a privilege being here not a right, no winder there are problems burying heads in sand. Its not about race.

Oreo

I can never understand why they did it Silverbrooks it filled me with dismay that a newly elected Labour government could have done something like that!

The timing was appalling.

It gave no time for those on low incomes to consider where they might (if they even could) make savings to compensate. No time to prepare to lose what is, to someone who is really watching the pennies, a lot of money.

So many pensioners must have been relying on the payment.

... and all to save so little on the scale of things.

If one has a gross income of £35,000 that leaves a net of income tax income of £30,500 (rounded). £4,500 paid in income tax.

From that, you have to find local taxes (say £2,400 a year which is what I pay) bringing the net income after the two major taxes to £28,000 (rounded).

£7,000 gone in taxes.

www.retirementlivingstandards.org.uk/ say that a single person needs to spend £31,700 a year to have a moderate standard of living. People may or may not agree with that but that’s what they say:

Some will argue there are luxuries in there but it’s the difference between living and existing and I think we are all entitled to that - the diffferent between running a small car or not, or having a holiday once a year.

Whether this kind of analysis has factored into where to set the cut off is not known.

Thanks for the clarification Silverbrook about Sunak.

They’re calling it the widows’ tax- as a couple would each be entitled to their £35000 threshold and probably at least one if not both might be eligible.
Not a widow(er) who is not getting her late DH’s pension.

MaizieD

Allira

MaizieD

Making derogatory remarks about older generations does you no favours, and does tend to prove the point that younger people are making.

My 'derogatory remarks' apply to those Gnetters who refuse to accept that the post war generation (AKA the Baby Boomers) have had far better life chances than any generation before or since. If that is the face such people present to younger generations I don't blame the young for being antagonistic.

I still say it's all about economics and that Thatcher, on the whole, left a disastrous legacy for the UK.

Post-war generations. Post-war is from 1945 to present day.

Do you mean those fortunate to have been born in 1960 - 1980?

No. I mean those who were born 1945 - 1964, the cohort known as the Baby Boomers.

I have already said that the 1997 - 2010 Labour government just picked up Thatcher's economic baton, though they did manage to improve some areas, such as far higher investment in the NHS and in education. Then Osborne undid any good work they'd done. So whataboutery about student fees really doesn't mean a great deal.

I don't know who decided that these terms should apply, anyway.

Those born post-war ie 9 months+ after May 1945 to about mid 1950/1960s will have had different experiences of childhood and young life in this country to those born 1960ish onwards.

'You've never had it so good' was a myth for many.

I don't believe that encouraging inter-generational strife is a good or positive thing for society either.

But I think I'm wasting time posting.

growstuff

Allira

growstuff

Allira

I still say it's all about economics and that Thatcher, on the whole, left a disastrous legacy for the UK.
Although it was Tony Blair's government which introduced tuition fees and removed the maintenance grant.
🤔

Blair didn't remove the maintenance grant. The tuition fees he introduced were nothing like they are now.

No, I know.

Once introduced, though, it was a stepping stone to increases.

I thought he did remove the maintenance grant, perhaps I'm misremembering. I thought it was 2001

I'm not sure when the maintenance grant was removed, but my daughter started university in 2012 and received a means-tested, non-repayable maintenance grant, so it must have been after that.

My youngest went in 2001 and had a student loan, no grant. She worked too.

RosieandherMaw

They’re calling it the widows’ tax- as a couple would each be entitled to their £35000 threshold and probably at least one if not both might be eligible.
Not a widow(er) who is not getting her late DH’s pension.

Single female pensioners are the pensioners most likely to be on low incomes.

I am living witness to the way that widow(ers) and women's pension rights have been eroded since 2001.

Abolition of State Widows Pension (2001); Equalisation (2010); and the removal of SERPS inheritance for those who were younger than 55 when their spouse died (2016).

We are so obsessed talking about £200 but few talk about the tens of thousands, (hundreds of thousands in my case) of State Pension lost to these changes.

I suspect those who are slightly older, still have their husbands and haven't been (or won't be) affected have no idea of the changes that have affected women like me.

I think women hae always been disadvantaged as far as pensions are concerned.

Allira The grant was means-tested. Maybe the parents of your youngest were earning too much. I know for an absolute fact that my daughter had a loan for the fees (£3,000 a year) and a means-tested, non-repayable maintenance grant. I was a single parent and her grant was based on my income, which was very low at the time, so she received the maximum grant and a top-up from the university because she had high A level grades.

This compares with my son, who went to university in 2017. He had a loan for his fees (£9,000 a year), but his maintenance loan is repayable at CPI plus (not sure what %). His grades were actually slightly higher than my daughter's, but there was no top-up available. The interest accrues from the moment the loan is taken out. I don't know exactly how much he owes now, but he doesn't have a hope in hell of paying it back, unless he gets an extremely high-paying job (highly unlikely). For him, it's more like a graduate tax for most of his working life. My daughter will have paid hers back by her mid 30s.

The Government have provided £93 million for higher education students through the access and hardship funds in 2001–02, over four times the amount in 1997–98. The funds are used to provide hardship payments and access bursaries, as well as fee waivers for part-time students on benefit and low incomes, and opportunity bursaries for young disadvantaged students through the excellence challenge programme.The following table shows amounts allocated by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) for students in hardship in 2000–01 and 2001–02. In 2001–02, the funding allocated includes access bursaries for students with children. Access and hardship funds for institutions in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are a matter for the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Executive respectively.

Hansard

Introduction of tuition fees
edit
In 1997, a report by Sir Ron Dearing recommended that students should contribute to the costs of university education. The Labour government under Tony Blair passed the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 which introduced tuition fees of £1,000 per academic year to start in the 1998/9 academic year.[6] In addition, maintenance grants were replaced with repayable student loans for all but the poorest students. The total loans provided by the SLC increased from £941 million in the 1997/8 academic year, to £1.23 billion in the next year, when tuition fees took effect.

Silverbrooks I agree that talk of the £200 is a bit of a red herring. My total income after rent, income tax and council tax is £11,354 per annum, so at the moment I'm below the minimum income suggested by retirementstandardsliving.co.uk. £200 seriously doesn't make much difference. It's £4 a week, which I can save in other ways. Giving me back £4 a week won't make much difference either - I guess I could treat myself to a coffee in a cafe somewhere, but not much else, so I've never thought it worthwhile making a fuss about it. That's real lived experience, not hearsay (or how my neighbour lives).

As you write, there are so many other ways in which the system disadvantages single women, especially those without highly paid jobs. Maybe the fuss about WFA was manufactured, so that people didn't look too closely at the ways women (and poorer people in general) are still at a disadvantage.

I know, the Student loans system changed every few years and is very complicated. I feel sorry for those paying such high fees, then loan repayment income tax and NI and probably very high rent. Impossible to save to buy a property for most.

Allira My daughter must have been one of the poorest students. If I remember correctly, the definition of "poorest" wasn't in dire poverty. There was a sliding scale, so that students whose parents earned less than about average could apply for a non-repayable maintenance grant and top it up with a repayable loan.

Or they are scared of losing votes to Reform.

Menopauselbitch

Or they are scared of losing votes to Reform.

If Labour act because it's scared of Reform, there's no need to vote for Reform. All Reform needs to do is stand on the sidelines and say "boo" and people will get what they want - allegedly. Fantastic news! Just vote Labour and leave all the scare-mongering to Reform.

😂

However, I did say Votes!
That's really scary.