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Keir Starmer ir said he hopes more pensioners will qualify for winter fuel payments in the apparent U-turn, one of the Labour leader’s prime minister’s most unpopular policies.
“We want to ensure that as we go, more pensioners will qualify for winter fuel payments,” the UK Prime Minister told the MP on Wednesday. “We just make decisions that we can afford.”
“We’ll look at it as part of a financial event,” he said, adding that he will in particular see the threshold where people are eligible for payments to expand participation. The next budget will be autumn.
Labour was told this month in a local election in the UK. The government’s decision to cut winter fuel payments was decided last year after gaining power as one of the top frustrations raised by voters.
Just two weeks after Downing Street changed its winter fuel payments, prioritization comments show a sharp reversal.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman could not confirm whether changes will be made over the next winter.
If the budget is made in October, like last year, only a limited window will remain between the official announcement and the start of winter.
The government is facing a continuing uproar over its decision last July to have £1.5 billion in winter fuel payments for pensioners of around 10 million years.
COT has restricted payments of £200 or £300 a year to pension recipients in England and Wales who received instrumental tested pension credits. It also applies only to people who earn around £11,800 a year for one person and under £18,000 for couples.
Prime Minister Rachel Reeves announced a deeply unpopular policy shortly after taking office, claiming that the government’s finances left behind by the previous conservative government should be filled with a £220 billion black hole.
There was a cry of “U-turn” from the opposition bench as starmer announced his ambition to water the policy on Wednesday.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenok described the star as a “desperate prime minister” and asked how hundreds of Labour lawmakers who voted for the policy could once again trust him.
A Badenoch spokesperson said that despite the government framing moves as needed to save government money, it was clearly “not a political decision, not a financial decision.”
Policy analysts said framing new tests will be a challenge for officials.
“That’s not easy,” said Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the Institute for Financial Studies. “One of the reasons they chose this approach is that they don’t have a great option.”
He said one option is to expand eligibility for payments to recipients of housing or disability benefits, but the former applies only to those for rental properties, while the latter has not been tested by means.
Changing the income threshold for the pension credit itself adds a cost, resembling “a dog waving a dog tail,” Adam said.
Whatever the Minister approaches, the financial impact could be modest in the context of much larger cuts elsewhere in the welfare system.
Double the number of people eligible to pay for winter fuel costs hundreds of millions of people.
Meanwhile, Liz Kendall, secretary of work and pensions, said at an event Wednesday that the government will push the benefits of illness and disability with a £4.8 billion cut, as the current system “has not been listening carefully” but “has not been listening carefully” concerns.
The government has also resisted the pressure to date to scrap the two child benefits CAP introduced by previous conservative governments. This is a £3.5 billion change.
Allison Ghanam, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said that the restrictions for two children were “elephants in the room” when Kendall gave her speech, “thrusts child poverty at the newest peak of this government’s clock.”
