LABOUR will bring in a means test for winter fuel payments for the elderly if they win the next general election, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls announced yesterday.
In a fundamental shift of Labour Party policy to the right, Balls said that more than 600,000 pensioners over the age of 61 would be hit by the change.
Balls told an audience at Thomson Reuters headquarters in London: ‘The situation we will inherit will require a very different kind of Labour government to those which have gone before.’
He warned: ‘We will inherit a substantial deficit. We will have to govern with much less money around. We will need to show an iron discipline.
‘The last Labour government was able to plan its 1997 manifesto on the basis of rising departmental spending in the first years after the election, but the next Labour government will have to plan on the basis of falling departmental spending.’
In response, Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director General of Age UK, said: ‘The Winter Fuel Payment provides a vital financial lifeline to many older people over the cold winter months, and the bad winters we have experienced recently and utility bills that keep on rising bring home just how important this extra help often is, especially for those on low and average incomes.
‘It is shocking that around 25,000 older people are dying each year because of the cold, so having enough money to turn up the heating can be literally a life or death matter.
‘Cutting the winter fuel payment to higher rate tax-payers would limit the help provided to older people and would end the payment as a universal benefit.
‘It is estimated this move would save the government around £100 million a year, but that is without factoring in the costs of setting up and administering a new system to transfer information about pensioners’ tax status between government departments.’
The GMB public sector workers union condemned the move, with GMB National Secretary Brian Strutton saying: ‘Balls has out Osborne’d Osborne’.
He added: ‘The idea floated by Mr Balls that Labour would end the principle of the universal winter fuel benefit is a retrograde step which will be highly divisive, unfair and yield little real benefit.
‘Badging it as a contribution to the health and care budget holes is laughable. What isn’t so funny is the repetition of the belief that public sector workers’ pay has to be kept down to preserve jobs.
‘This is a fake Tory argument that Mr Balls shouldn’t be peddling.’
The other two mass public sector unions, Unison and Unite, declined to comment when asked by News Line.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘What we need now is strong and sustainable growth, rather than further cuts to universal benefits.’
On Thursday this week, Labour leader Miliband is making a speech launching a further Labour attack on access to welfare.
