CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves pledged to press ahead with her winter fuel squeeze on pensioners today despite warnings that she is risking a public health crisis.
The government summoned bosses from the big energy monopolies to talks on helping vulnerable households this winter, but indicated there would be no U-turn on the decision to withdraw help with bills from more than nine million pensioners.
Echoing premier Sir Keir Starmer’s misery message, Ms Reeves has claimed it was a “tough decision” mandated by the “black hole” in public finances inherited from the Tories.
“It’s not a decision I wanted to make, but a decision I had to make in incredibly challenging circumstances to put the public finances on a firm footing,” she said, while also not ruling out tax rises in her October Budget.
Bosses attending the talks with Energy Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh are set to increase average household bills by £149 from October following a green light for the rise in the price cap from regulator Ofgem.
At the same time, the government is looking to save £1.4 billion by axing winter fuel payments from all pensioners not in receipt of pensions credit or other means-tested assistance.
Ministers are looking to the suppliers themselves to plug the gap by voluntary measures to help with bills, a fragile basis for optimism.
Indeed, a report issued by the committee on fuel poverty found that efforts to cut fuel poverty had “flatlined” in recent years.
The committee’s chairwoman, former Labour MP Caroline Flint, said: “For too many low-income households, the unaffordability of bills, especially in the coldest months, is all too real.
“We foresee that targeted financial support, possibly including the use of social tariffs, for vulnerable and low-income households may be needed for some years to come.”
Ms Flint added that “energy prices remain about £700 above pre-pandemic levels and are rising this winter. This poses a serious challenge.”
She also warned that problems were particularly severe among ethnic minority households in large towns and cities and “in the low-cost private rented sector, where too many people are still living in cold homes.”
Charity Age UK said it “strongly” opposed Ms Reeves’s benefit cut, which would mean “as many as two million pensioners who badly need the money to stay warm this winter will not receive it and will be in serious trouble as a result.”
Simon Francis, of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, warned that “this has the potential to create a public health emergency which will actually create more pressure on the under-pressure NHS which the Prime Minister says he wants to fix.”
Citizens Advice chief executive Clare Moriarty said more pensioners should sign up for pension credit, which would mean keeping winter fuel payments.
She told BBC that “there’s nearly another 900,000 people who could, so it’s really important to see better support so that people do access that benefit.
“Suppliers really need to step up to the responsibilities that they have to their customers to make sure that if people are struggling, they can have repayment plans,” she added.
“But it also needs the government to recognise the need for targeted support and that’s something that we would very much like to see coming out of the meeting.”
Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of employers’ lobby group Energy UK, claimed that the sector already provided “£54 million of discretionary support, on top of the more than £2 billion worth of mandatory schemes” for vulnerable households.
But predictably, Ms Pinchbeck preferred the idea of general taxation covering green policy costs, rather than these being included in bills.
