Genuine question re pensioner fuel payment cut

Surely setting the Christmas “bonus” at £10 is a piss take in itself. Tell me what use a tenner is nowadays

If she has money under the mattress that she has not declared to pension credit and it is a significant amount then she is commiting benefit fraud. I have just had the same argument with a friend of mine whose inlaws were stashing cash around the house whilst claiming significant amounts of pension credit.

Perfectly sensible. Millions don’t need it. My mum gives hers to a cat charity 🙄

The problem is they never taper, just put in cut offs and cause great harm to those on the threshold. I’ve suffered with my pension date being pushed back. Can’t access my NHS pension 5-7 years later than those just a few months more service than me, for example. Or the child benefit which was paid to joint incomes on twice the pay of those single income claimants who lost out.

Our pensioners hoard a lot of wealth and have done very well the last 2 decades, from being the poorest to wealthiest in society. The pendulum clearly needs to tip the other way. But needs some nuance to avoid harm to those on the edge or making work not seem to pay.

Part of the problem is the pensioners have as a group cheered on the Tories decimating support to children and families, while taking and taking. Not to mention the harm that their voting in Brexit caused. So you can kinda see why the sympathies are not there when the axe swings at their benefits.

The pensioner cannot work - the single person on UC should be out there working unless disabled or sick.

It should never have been paid out in the first place. Energy companies made record profits in the aftermath of the price increases. These payments of untested free money to pensioners are effectively a massive subsidy to fossil fuel companies. Windfall tax the absolute hell out of fossil fuel firms. Or even make it illegal to profit at all from fossil fuels. Cover costs ? Fine. Profit / Dividends / Bonuses ? MASSIVE Nope.

I don't think that would mean you get the 'freebies' - it is the guaranteed part of pension credit that matters.

Further more - and I agree with what you have posted - someone on £11,290 and receives pension credit of £10 which entitles them to all the freebies whereas a pension on £11,310 will receive none of the freebies that amount to about £3k per annum.
Can the people saying that this move is justified to help the poorer pensioners see the anomally.

Some posters are also being deluded that they think the WFA is riches - it is £200 per year PER HOUSEHOLD NOT PER PENSIONER and as such is of particular help to single 'female' pensioners who are already having to cut things to the bone because of the frozen tax allowance and no gold plated pensions.

As a women's website - I would have expected more concern for those that just miss out - they have already lost the free over 75 TV licence.

Wow! You think pensioners should be penalised for being elderly and needing more services? People can't help old, there's nothing we can do about it.

I don't know how old you but life goes so quick and you'll find one day that you're that elderly person. I hope that the younger generation then have more compassion than you do.

I have just crunched the numbers for a single pensioner receiving £11440 per annum. They would get Pension credit. Therefore still get fuel allowance.

This will be me in 6 yrs btw.

The thing is that the more complexity you add to the process, the less it saves.

Many more don't, and means testing it is more fair. The money then goes to people who need it.

There are fairly regular threads about means testing various pensioner benefits such as the winter fuel allowance, and while it's far from unanimous, there's often decent support for the idea. And those threads of course would have been during the Tory government.

The problem is that we have limited resources and every public service needs more at the moment. We already give pensioners more than double the basic income that we assess is necessary to live for those on uc. We need to make choices - if we spend £1.5billion giving extra to pensioners (many of whom are extremely wealthy) then we have to cut something else.

I agree that to keep it simple it has to be tied to something that already exists, bur they've chosen Pension Credit which I think is far too low a bar. The personal allowance is £1k or so more, which would definitley help, but I think will still leave a large number of (probably women) pesnioners being excluded.

The problem is that the next logical tax band is the higher rate one, which is just over £50k and so probably wouldn't save that much. But I think there's a relatively quick way of linking it to council tax band and age. After all, when we came out of Covid the Government / Councils very quickly got cost of living support to those in properties banded A to C. Add an age element, which doesn't sound beyond the wit of even the local councils, and that might be more reasonable. Limit it further by only applying to households claiming teh single person discount. Sure, there might be some better off pensioners in small properties who will benefit when they wouldn't otherwise, but I'd rather than that swathes of people in fuel poverty as a result of Labour's policy.

Would you include the £10 Christmas Bonus that people on PIP get? Or is it only one group of vulnerable people who you think should be targeted?

I've heard Kier Starmer Pension Harmer as well.

My mum is a tiny bit over the threshold for pension credits, and has no private pension as they didn't exist in the way they do now. She got auto enrolled not long before retirement and had £1,500 sat in there which they released in full and paid for repairs on the house.

She absolutely needs the WFA.

It should be means tested, not wiped out with a ridiculously low cut off.

Exactly!

The cut off may be too low, and perhaps Labour might listen to that criticism and add some other qualifying benefits to make WFA available to more - but some form of means testing absolutely needed to happen. The triple lock commitment should mean pensions go up a bit every year which should cover WFA for most.

I did vote Labour in this election but am not happy with the level of cut off that has been decided on. My Stepmother is affected, she’s just over the threshold for pension credit she says, it will affect her.

My Dad promised her before he died she will never be cold again as she used to be freezing in her old house and I want to keep his promise so am preparing to work out a way to help her so need to come up with a plan as currently not working as 3 weeks post surgery and there’s enough financial burden on DH currently.

It is too simplistic. Energy is expensive to produce and we live in a cold climate. The energy market is heavily regulated to ensure we get energy as close to cost as possible but without all the suppliers going out of business.

what do you suggest- forcing suppliers to sell for less than cost? How would they fund that?

There is more of this to come.

The triple lock needs to go, IHT needs to be increased and care needs to be reformed.

It will happen IMO because people have handed Labour the majority they need to be confident about doing this.

I hope this is what people expected.

My Mum used to go for lunch at Harvey Nichols with hers and give any left over to the Grandkids

It was a charity event for lonely pensioners that I volunteer for, the soft drinks and tea/coffee are free. We even provide transport and for most of the users it is the only social thing they do all month as they are too skint to go out much.