WTF? £600 winter fuel allowance for all pensioners!

[user1497207191]

No wonder the country has no money and the deficit/debt is getting bigger.

MIL just phoned up saying she'd got a letter telling her £600 was on the way to her and asking why, when she doesn't need it?

Just why??? She's not claiming means tested benefits. Her state and her husband's occupational pension are already far more than she needs to live on, meaning she saves a few hundred pounds a month into ISAs (which already stand at over £100k). Owns her own house, so no rent/mortgage.

Why the hell can't this money be directed at those who actually need it or more worthy causes? It's insane to keep throwing money at people who don't need it.

She doesn't need it, she doesn't want it. She wouldn't miss it if it wasn't paid to her.

If they can means test the child benefit and claw it back from those earning over £50k, why can't they come up with a way of ensuring winter fuel allowance is only paid to those who may need it? Why not only paid to those pensioners claiming pension credits, or rent allowance, or whatever?

Thank you so much for this, it very much reflects my lived experience and that of many of my friends. We all worked for decades in not particularly well paid jobs, we relied on each other for after school child care, (I was in a group of mums who would all help each other out). My house is a two up two down in a run down inner city area which due to austerity is now tipping over into almost Dickensian levels of neglect because the council is nearly broke. There is a fiction on here on here that all pensioners are wealthy, spend half the year abroad and keep warm by burning £50 notes while hoping that the Tories rule forever! There seems to be no comprehension about the reality of life for the women who are now retired who did the "ordinary" jobs, retail work, dinner ladies, factory work, cleaning, all vital and all low paid. I have one friend who is a "wealthy pensioner" and this is because she is married to a man who had a very high flying career and they have a marriage that has lasted. She has a good life style and I do not begrudge her any of it, this is just how life works out. Us old people are as diverse as any other demographic, all with our own life stories. I would never make sweeping generalisations about other age groups, it stifles debate and the exchange of views.

In particular re the payment of women’s pensions - my mother who is 75 had her state pension at 60, whereas a currently 61 yo won’t have had that. That's not a difference between boomers and non-boomers. Many of the boomers won't have their pension till 66. Many of those already retired didn't get their pension till 63,64,65,,or 66.

I m a bit baffled why these payments are being portrayed on this thread as a political thing. They were introduced by Gordon Brown over 20 years ago, have any of the parties seriously recommended removing them?
I suspect the Tories would be damned across the board if they stopped them, and that people would be baffled if Labour did.

Afaik the OP brought them up because now is the season when people hear about them?

I would think if one parent earns over £50kl child benefit would not necessarily be needed

Monthly take home on that salary is £3,100 pcm. Average rent on a family sized flat in London is easily half that. Plus bills on top. Easy to see how a family with an income of £50k pa might be struggling in some parts of the country. Equally unfair if the family next door have a parent earning £40k and a parent working very part time earning £10k and get child benefit.

Yes people are free to do so (I’m sure the ones I know are v generous with charitable donations), but not all will. The point is that public money is being paid towards plenty of people who have no need for it at all - whether or not they go on to donate it to charity is not the issue.

So because your MIL doesn't need it, you think no-one should get it. And despite the Tories giving billions of pounds of our money to their friends with their phony Covid contracts, you think it's pensioners that are bankrupting the country.
The same pensioners that provide approx 50% of childcare to enable their adult DCs to be active in the workforce.
Your MIL can send it back. Or you can use it do a finance course - then you might understand why it's the Tories to blame for our current economic mess and not pensioners.

Exactly. There is a total lack of any sort of thinking on these pensioner bashing threads. I think some people just want the over 65s to hurry up and die.

@Zebedee55
The rest will be £500 pounds. Why would you begrudge a family member anything?
Do you think anyone other than pensioners with £100k savings should get benefits?
They don't as it's means tested, it's a shocking waste of public money.

Brilliant! Delighted for them.

Maybe she could donate it to a local food bank or a warm places charity

@ErrolTheDragon
"They were introduced by Gordon Brown over 20 years ago, have any of the parties seriously recommended removing them?
I suspect the Tories would be damned across the board if they stopped them, and that people would be baffled if Labour did."

I have often thought it would be better to remove it and add it onto the state pension. However, generally it is paid per household - not per person, and I think by adding onto the state pension, it would then be taxable - I don't think the Winter Fuel Payment is.
(Note pensions, including the state pension count as taxable income).

There are several long term benefits that aren't means tested. You can be a millionaire and get PIP or contribution based ESA, for example.

When Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland scrapped prescription charges, they did a cost benefit analysis. The same will have been undertaken for pensions with the same results. Paying staff to monitor eligibility criteria and the cost of healthcare to mitigate cold-related illnesses will be more expensive than making a blanket payment.

DWP can barely cope with its current workload. Having to make millions more annual assessments would not be feasible.

Our standing fuel order, gas and electricity, is £560 a month.
We also have an open fire which we light most evenings so have just bought £310.85 smokeless fuel and logs and £28 fire lighters.

I am grateful for the £600.

We are pensioners and don’t vote Tory.

Haha - tell me you have no experience of working with HMRC plus DWP systems and data without telling me you have never worked with....

It cost more to means test CB that was saved, it was political posturing which served to do nothing but break the assurance that mothers had some money. It pretty much never saves money to means smaller flat rate benefits which is why even the current government don't do it.

Its a different world from the sums spent on housing benefits and UC.

Bring it on!
Says pensioner c. 1953.😁

Conservatives trying to keep the grey voters!

And failing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379439/uk-election-polls-by-age/

I’ve just read more of the thread and discovered the £600 is only for the over 80s, Typical Tory trick, I’m not 80 until next year.

I worked all my adult life (as did my late DH), for what I get.

We watched as various groups (many young) got furlough, handouts and grants - many of which turned out to be fraudulent claims, because they weren't checked properly.

We didn't begrudge anyone anything.

And, I would like to note, I pay taxes on everything I get.

If you want to have a strop about benefits, best aim it at those who are either too young or whatever, to have paid anything into the system.🙄

I'm not anywhere near that. So, no extra 25p a week, and no enhanced fuel allowance....😗

Why the hell can't this money be directed at those who actually need it or more worthy causes? It's insane to keep throwing money at people who don't need it.

1. Because it's cheaper not to means test.
2. Because it's politically expedient to give money to pensioners (voter turnout is higher in the elderly).
3. Because there's no political capital in demonising pensioners.

The counterpoint is that it is more expensive to means test other benefits, but they tend to go to groups that are less likely to vote, and where there's political capital to be made from portraying them as lazy, feckless, or undeserving.

Everyone aspires to grow old (it beats the alternative), and the way pensioners are treated by politicians reflects that.

There is no mileage in reminding the populace that the state pension is just another a benefit.

The reality is not that all pensioners vote Tory, despite pensioner incomes being significantly lower than workers twenty years younger, but that on the whole they tend to vote. Voting intentions of the young would have more influence if they voted in larger numbers.

The more interesting question is why voting intentions show the shift on average at 39. That's an age when adults with children will have some of the maximum costs, will be dealing more often with health care and education, will be having aging parents who may need support and health care.

That is the age at which one might expect to see a push toward a party they trusted to support and modernise public services (as we saw in 1997).