Has the Government shot itself in the foot?

[Fernie6491]

Just wondering about the idea of the government stopping winter fuel payments for us oldies.

i admit we are comfortably enough off, to not actually need it, but they say those claiming pension credit etc., will still be paid the fuel allowance.

The goverment spokespeople say not all pensioners who could claim pension credit are doing so. If this prompts those pensioners to claim their due, the government will be paying out a whole lot more than they currently do, plus the allowance .

They seem to have shot themselves in the foot, trying to save money, but actually will end up paying out even more to those who previously never claimed benfits. Is this correct, or am I going mad?

The policy seems well-intentioned, and it's good to see a government not just bending whichever way the wind blows for popularity.

The optics however are appalling and Labour need to clarify urgently how poorer pensioners will be fully protected.

Yes, I think it has.

Scrapping the winter fuel payments while also giving pay rises to their union mates is awful optics.
Even if you agree with the winter fuel scrapping and/or the pay rises, it doesn't look good.

That's a weak argument. The two things are completely separate. The Tories would have let strikes go on and on and did not honour pay agreements.

Keir Starmer has clearly read the 16th century classic, The Prince, by Machiavelli. The advice there is still totally relevant today.

Machiavelli advises leaders who have to take tough decisions to do all the bad thinks at once and without delay, to get them over with and move on. I guess Keir is hoping that, by the time of the next GC, either his tough policies will be bearing fruit, or we'll have forgotten them!

Having said that, I'm not very impressed, though.

Really stupid move. There are lots of pensioners who are not wealthy who have lost out.
Also ex pats still getting it due to some legal issue with Brexit.

There are plenty of ways to claw back some of this payment from wealthier pensioners without impacting poor pensioners. It’s an absolutely stupid hill to die on.

Starmer is a good “department head”. He picks clever and competent people. He’s a decent enough leader in terms of facing tough decisions.

what he is , however also, is a poor politician, and a very poor (at times) communicator.

The comparisons made between him and Blair are ludicrous, and only stack up because Blair and him occupy the “centre right”.

Blair was a fantastic communicator who believed very passionately in political argument. If you didn’t believe in what he believed in, he’d make it his life’s work that day to argue with you to try and persuade. He may not succeed (and many abhor the very mention of the man’s name) but he believed politics is about argument and persuasion.

Starmer seems to believe politics is about administration. put the right things in train and everyone will be better off. There is almost no decent comms or change communication around his works.

I fear he will have to somehow demonstrate impact and positive effect, very quickly, or he will find people will be scratching their heads at least, and testing the hair out and chucking it at him at worst.

I had an interesting discussion about this at the weekend. My friend is a benefits advisor. His thoughts were that it was done early because it’s easy to take cash away at this stage from pensioners. Ok a small proportion will claim pension credit going forward who didn’t before. A proportion would never vote Labour anyway, so they don’t matter. Some will be dead by the next election, and a lot will have forgotten/have dementia so they don’t count either. And some will think it was a good idea.

I hate this often bought out trope about ex pats getting WFA.
Those in Spain do not get it and there are many other European countries that don't either.

Will get flamed but I agree with it. Can use a personal example-of my aunt and uncle- hundreds of thousands in the bank but get winter fuel payment, which they save, tight as a crab’s ass. They don’t have the heating on, my uncle is always hot even in bitter weather he will have the car window down and wear shorts. Aunt is much the same.

If you have pension credit and are low income you still get it- as you should.
The problem is there’s a cut off, (there has to be somewhere I guess) so you may miss out by a few pounds and actually really need it, basically you’ve paid into a private pension which just takes you over.

I think it should go on consumption, if you are cold / use a lot then you get a contribution to your energy consumption.

They are getting it living just over the other side of the border in NI.

How about those single pensioners not eligible for winter fuel payments AND now having the 25% council tax reduction removed?

So my (widowed) father gets buggered twice over! Are Labour hoping all OAPs will have died by the next GE?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/27/pensioners-living-in-eu-to-keep-winter-fuel-allowance/

Personally I think they should try to get bills down for everyone. I lived in the U.K. last year and my elec bills were about £200 a month. Now I live back in Aus and I pay equivalent of £100 - and that includes my heating/cooling and hot water, whereas in the U.K. I had a massive oil bill for that too!

On the optics of it - it’s a very odd choice for a new govt “of the people” to do as one of their first acts. It might have been better to bundle it in with all the other awful stuff coming in the budget. Introducing it on its own has allowed it to gain traction - even his own MPs don’t want it, or the unions! It stinks of terrible advise somewhere.

And although they keep trying to bleat on about the “200bn black hole” - this has been discredited enough for people to realise that this was a political decision that was either a total blunder or a way of punishing what they thought would be rich pensioners, and has in fact turned out to affect a hell of a lot of relatively poor ones instead.

The idea that it’s all or nothing is daft though. Of course it should be means tested, and surely a sensible way would be to have a sliding scale that also takes into account whether the person is single or not. If ever there was a job for AI then this is it

All benefits should be means tested.

As a political party claiming to look after the less fortunate, they aren’t doing very well.

Totally agree. My parents don’t need it (although they are careful with bills, they can afford them, plus they have a wood burner) and would happily be means tested out of it. This blunt instrument is just stupid.

I think it was ridiculous to take this away from pensioners at the same time as giving train drivers (who are already very overpaid) a big pay increase. Shows the government’s priorities are keeping unions on side at all costs

Apparently the unions are now calling on Starmer to cancel it as it will affect their retired members. I think he will,now u turn very quickly.

The problem this government has is that expectations are too high.

People are still expecting living standards to rise or at least not to decline. At the same time, we have fewer and fewer net contributors to the state, an ageing and increasingly unhealthy population who expect the NHS to fix them, and the state to provide social care etc. We have a steady influx of low skilled people who will not become net contributors and will add to the pressure on social services. We are also facing increased demands for expenditure on defence, climate change mitigations etc.

The state can continue to increase taxes on the declining number of net contributors - but this risks some of the very small number of large contributors leaving the country, businesses failing, some trying to avoid tax, and the tax base becoming even smaller.

Starmer has to get the economy growing or manage expectations downwards.
The outlook is pretty bleak.

Pension credit was the existing cut off point that was already available to them without having to put in place extra administration, so they used it. Pension credit is for pensioners who are almost destitute. It was a stupid, lazy cut off point to have chosen, and I think there will be a price to pay. A big one.

I saw in an article that cutting it off at Council tax band C would have included a lot more poorer pensioners, stopped it for more wealthy pensioners and although some would have also been caught out by that cut off, significantly fewer than are going to freeze this winter by leaving the cut off point at pension credit receipt.

@luckylavender The Tories were holding out for some changes to working practices from ASLEF.
Starmer did not even ask for anything, just handed over the money he took from Pensioners.

Not the same thing. The Tories just refused to negotiate

I do think the winter fuel payments should be targeted to the least well off.

Personally, I'm more alarmed about the 5% council tax cap being removed. Councils are basically free to raid our bank accounts now. Also the 25% reduction is going to hit many people hard.

I think Labour are disgusting and Starmer is a pointless banal bureaucrat. I no, I don't vote Tory.