No prospect of universal winter fuel payment, says pensions minister
There is no prospect of returning to a universal winter fuel payment, pensions minister Torsten Bell has said.
Speaking to the Work and Pensions Committee, Mr Bell said: 'Directly on your question of is there any prospect of a universal winter fuel payment, the answer is no, the principle I think most people, 95% of people, agree, that it's not a good idea that we have a system paying a few hundreds of pounds to millionaires, and so we're not going to be continuing with that.
'But we will be looking at making more pensioners eligible.'
Mr Bell said he did not have 'lots to add' to what Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had said recently about the allowance.
He told the MPs: 'Of course the announcement, as and when it's made, will be made to the House.'
Sir Keir recently signalled a partial U-turn over the Government's decision to strip winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.
The Prime Minister said 'as the economy improves', he wanted to look at widening eligibility for the payments worth up to £300.
But officials have been unable to say how many more pensioners would be eligible.
The decision to means-test the previously universal payment was one of the first announcements by Chancellor Rachel Reeves after Labour's landslide election victory last year, and it has been widely blamed for the party's collapse in support.
Watch live 🔴 https://t.co/TFEAs8aH2i https://t.co/CfhgpUUKVr
— Work & Pensions Committee (@CommonsWorkPen) June 4, 2025
The Government has insisted the policy was necessary to help stabilise the public finances, allowing the improvements in the economic picture which Sir Keir said could result in the partial reversal of the measure.
On July 29 2024, the Government announced that from winter 2024, winter fuel payments would be dependent on receiving another means-tested benefit, as part of measures to fill a 'black hole' in the public finances.
This meant the number of pensioners receiving the payment was reduced by around 10 million, from 11.4 million to 1.5 million.
Pension credit is the primary benefit by which pensioners can receive the winter fuel payment.
The credit tops up incomes for poorer pensioners and acts as a gateway to additional support, including the winter fuel payment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
British lawyers for Hamas investigated by watchdog
The law firm trying to remove Hamas from the UK's list of proscribed terrorist groups is being investigated by a solicitors' watchdog, The Telegraph understands. Riverway Law made headlines in April when it launched an appeal to have Hamas taken off Britain's list of proscribed groups. The firm made a submission to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, arguing that Hamas posed 'no threat to the UK people' and should be allowed to operate here on free speech grounds. Just days after submitting its appeal to the Home Office, the firm was reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. Mr Jenrick argued that Riverway's appeal potentially breached UK sanctions rules on terror groups. He also drew attention to apparent social media posts about the war in Gaza by Fahad Ansari, the leading lawyer in the case and the director of Riverway. The posts included claims that Hamas is a 'legitimate resistance movement' protecting Palestinians from 'UK-sponsored Israeli genocide'. The SRA is understood to be at an early phase of its investigation and no conclusions have yet been reached. In a letter to the watchdog sent in April, Mr Jenrick said there was 'a clear need to uphold public confidence in the legal profession and to ensure rigorous enforcement of the UK sanctions regime'. He said that there were 'significant questions as to whether Riverway have complied with their obligations under the UK sanctions regime, the SRA's own published guidance and broader professional standards expected of solicitors'. Mr Ansari has defended his firm's actions. In response to Mr Jenrick's complaint he said: 'We were in contact with OFSI [the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation], external counsel and others who had represented sanctioned organisation[s], to ensure that we did not breach our duties under the sanctions regime.' Riverway submitted a 106-page application to the Home Office in April, accompanied by a video which was posted to its social media channels. The application argued the proscription of Hamas in the UK should be lifted in line with European Convention of Human Rights protections in the interest of freedom of speech. It also claimed the ban is disproportionate and that Hamas poses 'no threat to the UK people'. The ongoing appeal, believed to be the first of its kind, is being fronted by Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas's head of international relations and its legal office. Mr Jenrick welcomed the SRA's investigation on Saturday, telling The Telegraph: 'Our sanctions regime is pointless if it isn't enforced. 'Ansari is a shameless apologist who argues Hamas poses no threat to the British people. What nonsense. This evil death cult threatens free people everywhere.' Mr Ansari has previously appeared to make a series of controversial social media posts related to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. In posts dating from last year he appeared to praise fighters of the 'courageous Palestinian mujahideen', wrote 'you should view Hamas as an army of angels' and dismissed international courts as 'hopeless', saying that 'only armed resistance' would help Palestinians. In April last year, a post on his X account said: 'Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating especially the courageous Palestinian mujahideen who continue to resist the Western-backed Israeli genocide entirely on their own. You are the pride of this Ummah. May you celebrate Eid one day in a fully liberated Palestine.' Another comment posted in June said: 'If you believe genocidal Israel is the most moral army in the world, then you should view Hamas as an army of angels.' The SRA declined to comment. Mr Ansari and Riverway Law were approached for comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Washington Post
43 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Bucharest gay pride march turns 20 as LGBTQ+ Romanians face growing hostility from right-wing groups
BUCHAREST, Romania — Thousands of LGBTQ+ supporters took to the streets of Romania's capital Saturday for its annual gay pride parade, following a tense election cycle marked by an increase in hate speech against the community. Marchers of all ages walked through Bucharest's streets and down the central Victory Avenue, as many waved colorful flags, blew whistles and held placards that read: 'Be proud, be bold, be you!' Held since 2005, the event marked Bucharest Pride's 20th anniversary.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Without a Badenoch/Farage pact, the Left will rule Scotland for decades to come
Did Zia Yusuf's dramatic (and as it turns out, temporary) resignation on the day of the Hamilton by-election cost Reform the seat? Of course not. The idea that chaos in Reform puts off its voters is based on a misunderstanding of what motivates those voters. Reform exists because the older parties failed. You might argue that not all of that failure was their fault. Some of the issues that enrage the electorate – poor public services, high taxes, rising prices, dwindling social capital – are the products of a lockdown that 93 per cent of the country demanded. Others are products of our demographic decline: nations with elderly populations are bound to be less dynamic. Equally, though, there have been unforced errors and broken promises, above all on immigration. Reform is a howl of protest against those betrayals. It is an essentially negative vote, and I say that in no slighting spirit. Every party attracts negative votes. I used to get lots of them as a Conservative MEP when people wanted to punish Labour governments. Negative votes can take you, Trump-like, to the very top. I simply make the point that Reform's supporters show scant interest in their party's policies, let alone its personnel. Reform came from nowhere in the Hamilton by-election despite not having a leader in Scotland. It is hard to imagine the famously resilient electors of Lanarkshire determining their vote on the basis of an unelected party official resigning in London. If we want to play 'what if', the thing that might have given Reform the extra 1,471 votes it needed was the backing of the local Conservatives. Not every Tory would vote for Reform in the absence of a Conservative candidate, of course. Still, the electoral system used for Holyrood argues strongly for a deal at next year's Scottish Parliament election. Just as the SNP and the Scottish Greens used to maximise their representation by focusing respectively on the constituencies and the top-up list, so Reform and the Tories should do the same in 11 months' time. In Scotland, as in England and Wales, the parties have similar policies but different electorates. The Scottish Conservatives are strong in the Borders and the north-east, Reform in the more populous Central Belt. An understanding between them would leave both with more MSPs next May. Such a deal in Wales might have put Reform into office had the principality not just ditched that voting system and adopted EU-style proportional representation, but that's another story. How many Tory and Reform voters would co-operate? Although the two manifestos are compatible – lower taxes, strong defence, less wokery, secure borders, growth over greenery – tonal and aesthetic differences remain. Some Reform supporters will never vote Conservative, either because they can't forgive the tax rises and immigration failures of the last administration or, conversely, because they are former Labour voters who would never back the party of Margaret Thatcher. Some Conservatives – a smaller number – recoil from a party they see as a Trumpian personality cult. One way to express the difference is this. The Tories, after three and a half centuries, have a sense of the trade-offs and complexities involved in holding office. Reform is in the happy position of being able to claim that it is simply a question of willpower. Consider the issue of immigration. On Friday, Kemi Badenoch embarked on a major overhaul of the Blairite juridical state. She asked her shadow law officers to look at all treaties and domestic laws that hinder elected ministers from fulfilling their promises, and set five tests by which to measure success. Will we be able to deport people who should not be here, protect our veterans from 'lawfare', prioritise British citizens in housing and welfare, keep malefactors in prison, and get things built? Meeting all five tests is hard, but not impossible. Badenoch wants to take her time and get it right. But, to some, it will come across as equivocation. 'Why can't you just say now that you would leave the European Convention on Human Rights?', they ask. I have no doubt that that is where she will end up. But we need policies, not slogans. Leaving the ECHR is not a skeleton key that unlocks every door. Our problems go far deeper. Outside the ECHR, we would be constrained by numerous other international accords: the UN Refugee Convention; the Paris Agreement on climate change (under which our Australia Free Trade Agreement is being challenged in court); the Aarhus Convention, which caps costs for activist groups bringing eco-challenges. Even the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been used both to challenge deportation orders and to block welfare reforms. All these things need to be looked at, calmly and thoroughly. Nor is it just foreign treaties. The last Labour government passed a series of domestic statutes that constrained its successors: the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act, the Equality Act and a dozen more. We need to tackle these, too. What, if anything, should replace the ECHR? Do we update our own 1689 Bill of Rights? Do we offer a CANZUK version? Do we rely on pure majoritarianism? Even if all the obnoxious laws were swept away, what would we do about Left-wing activists who become judges rather than go to the bother of getting themselves elected to anything, and who legislate from the bench? Can we return to the pre-Blair arrangements where the lord chancellor is in charge? My point is that all this requires patience, detail and nuance. But a lot of voters are understandably impatient, and regard nuance as the sign of a havering milksop – a nuancy-boy, so to speak. They see not a Conservative Party determined to repair the broken state machine so that it can deliver on its manifesto, but a bunch of vacillating wets shying away from simple solutions. This worries me. Suppose that Nigel Farage were to form the next government and leave the ECHR, only to find that illegal immigrants continued to arrive, that judges continued to apply the rules asymmetrically, and that every one of his statutes ended up being snarled up in the courts? What would be the impact on our democracy? I pick the example of immigration because it is the most salient, but much the same applies across government. Reducing spending involves trade-offs, and anyone who pretends that there are huge savings to be made by scrapping DEI programmes or cutting waste has not looked at the figures. The same is true of reducing welfare claims, scrapping quangos, reforming the NHS and raising school standards. The diagnosis may be easy, but the treatment will be long and difficult, and will require more than willpower. In his response to Yusuf's resignation, Farage reminded us why he is a successful politician. He blamed Islamophobic trolls for making his party chairman's life impossible, thereby both anticipating the 'no one can work with Nigel' charge and reinforcing his non-racist credentials. The same calculation led him to condemn Tommy Robinson, and played a part in his falling-out with Rupert Lowe. Farage knows that there are hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised Muslims, many of whom, like his white supporters, are former Labour voters in decaying northern towns. Unnoticed by the national media, Farage has been reaching out to these communities. Imagine Farage's political nous and personal energy allied to the detailed policy work that the Tories are undertaking. Imagine his reach, whether in Hamilton or in some of those Muslim-dominated old industrial towns, complementing the traditional Conservative appeal to property-owners. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Next year's Scottish elections will be the first test of whether figures on the British Right are prepared to put country before party. A possible by-election in Jacob Rees-Mogg's old seat may be another. But one thing is already clear. If the two parties are taking lumps out of each other all the way to the next general election, they will lose – and they will deserve to. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
