100,000 pensioners pushed into poverty? Why it doesn't pay to get old under Labour
It was almost as if the weather gods were playing some nasty trick to drive home the message about January winter fuel payments. On the day that Ofgem announced the new, higher price cap on energy bills, the almost comically named Storm Bert threatened to blow everyone’s winter budgeting off track.
If ever there was a moment for the Labour government to think again about their winter fuel allowance changes (WFA), and cancel the price cap rise, this was it.
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Hide AdThe announcement of the new price cap from January came as many of us were picking our way carefully across icy city pavements, and friends and family further north were being warned not to travel because of snow.


Rising energy costs
Our climate in most of Scotland is rarely kind between November and March and, as I heard the price cap figures announced on the radio news, my heart broke for all those for whom they will bring hardship. Families and pensioners who tell me every week of the increasing challenge of making ends meet.
The new maximum rise that energy companies can charge for those on a standard variable tariff will rise to £1,738 for a typical household using electricity and gas. That comes after a 10 per cent increase last month.
It comes after the Department for Work and Pensions released figures warning that between 50,000 and 100,00 extra pensioners would be pushed into poverty by restricting winter fuel payments.
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Hide AdThe double whammy of the cap increase and the WFA changes for pensioners make you wonder if it just doesn’t pay to grow old under this government. Once again this winter, my constituents in Edinburgh West, and so many others, will face the prospect of having to fork out even more for their energy bills.
‘Change’ for the worse
Perhaps the most galling thing for many is that this government was elected on a platform of change. A promise that they would be a better government for working people and that, this winter, things would be different.
On that last thing, at least they have been true to their word. They are different. In many ways, they are worse. Talking to people across the country over the past few months, they have told me that they feel increasingly let down.
Pensioners in my own constituency, who don’t qualify for pensioners credit – now needed to receive the WFA – but will be able to pay their energy bills, tell me that losing it will have a huge impact on them. At a recent constituency surgery, a pensioner told me, almost guiltily, that she and her husband would be OK, but that they worried about some of their friends and neighbours.
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Hide Ad“I don’t mind,” she said, “but for some people it will make a big difference to what they are able to afford over winter. Surely there was a better way.”
I agreed. As the first cold of the winter bit, I thought about all those for whom it will be the start of a miserable few months. The promise of a pension increase in the spring is all very well. But that doesn’t keep the heating on through winter.
Christine Jardine is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West
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