LABOUR MPs who voted to cut winter fuel payments to 10 million pensioners were criticised at TUC Congress today.

A motion at the Congress in Brighton calling for major welfare reforms was passed after the government defeated Tuesday’s Commons vote on blocking the cut.

Usdaw general secretary Paddy Lillis called on the government to set up a Universal Credit taskforce for “not just small tweaks around the edges but to make real and lasting change.”

Public and Commerical Services (PCS) union deputy president Bev Laidlaw, seconding, said: “I’m so ashamed to belong to a Labour Party where so many voted today to push so many pensioners into fuel poverty.

“Cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners is a political choice and leaving children in poverty is a political choice, and let’s be clear — those are the wrong political choices.”

She said thousands of PCS members who administer Universal Credit within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) also have to claim the benefit “to top up their low pay and that’s a disgrace.”

The motion called for the taskforce to commit to abolishing the two-child benefit cap and an end the punitive system of sanctions.