NEW LABOUR Chancellor Rachel Reeves dropped a bombshell on the working class across the UK in a statement in Parliament yesterday, announcing that she is ending the £300 universal winter fuel payment, which is currently paid to all pensioners.
She said she is scrapping this vital benefit immediately, from this winter onwards, consigning millions to a life of misery, freezing in their homes.
Around 10 million pensioners and seven million pensioner households will lose out as a result of this vicious cut, which will transfer £1.4bn into government coffers.
She said that her attack on pensioners will help fill what she called a ‘black hole’ inherited from the Tories.
Announcing that the £300 winter fuel payment, which was created by Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1997, will now be means tested, she claimed: ‘Let me be clear, this is not a decision I wanted to make.’
Reeves announced that a Budget will be held on 30 October, and it will be authorised by the unelected Office for Budget Responsibility.
‘The Budget will involve taking difficult decisions to meet the government’s fiscal rules across spending welfare and tax,’ she said.
She went on to scrap the 40 new hospitals pledge announced by the previous Tory government, saying: ‘In October 2020 the government announced that 40 new hospitals would be built by 2030.
‘Since then only one new project has opened to patients and only six have started their main construction activity…
‘That gave our constituents false hope. We need to be straight with the British people about what is deliverable and what is affordable.’
Reeves said that she will accept ‘in full’ pay rises recommended by the pay review bodies for public sector workers, including NHS workers and teachers.
It will mean ‘giving hardworking staff the pay rise they deserve,’ she said, ‘while ensuring that we can recruit and retain the people we need.
‘The government has agreed to a pay deal for junior doctors with the BMA,’ Reeves confirmed, in a deal involving an average 22% pay rise over two years.
‘Today marks the start of a new relationship with the government and staff working in the NHS,’ Reeves went on, warning that paying for the pay rises which she announced will mean ‘difficult choices’.
Reeves said the cost of funding public sector pay rises will be £9bn and she will ask departments to find £3bn worth of cuts in ‘non-essentials’.
She will require all departments to ‘find savings totalling at least £3bn this year,’ adding that she ‘will work with them to find those savings’ and will also require departments to find ‘2% savings in back office costs’.
Reeves said the government will save money by scrapping the Rwanda scheme, cancelling the Stonehenge tunnel, development to the A27 work and plans to restore old railway lines.
She announced a ‘multi-year spending review’ that will set the budgets for government departments for at least three years and provide ‘long term certainty’.
She warned: ‘I will look closely at the welfare system because if you can work you should work. That is a principle of this government… So we will ensure that the welfare system is focused on supporting people into employment and we will assess the unacceptable levels of fraud and error in our welfare system and take action to bring that down.’
She also warned that she will target ‘falling public sector productivity’ and is creating a ‘new Office of Value for Money’ to that end.