As the government takes winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners, questions remain about whether it’s justified.
In the summer Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the support would now be restricted to people on pension credit or other benefits.
She said she was left with no other option after finding a £22billion black hole in the public finances left by the Tories.
However, Labour is yet to publish details about how the government arrived at the decision.
Speaking on The Division Bell podcast, The Mirror’s Lizzy Buchan said: “There is a broad question about publishing the rationale behind this sort of thing.
“Keir Starmer had a lot of questions from Rishi Sunak at PMQs about whether an impact assessment had been done about the cut to the Winter Fuel allowance[.]”
“Government departments do you usually look at – what does that mean? How will it impact health, mental health?
“It’s interesting that the government don’t…feel that they want to publish that.”
Mr Starmer, who has admitted the move is unpopular, has resisted calls to rethink the cut or to tweak the eligibility for the £300 winter fuel payment.
He was previously critical of the then PM Rishi Sunak for not publishing the details behind the controversial £20 Universal Credit cut.
Lizzy said: “I was reminded of when the Conservatives cut the £20 uplift of Universal Credit after the pandemic…eventually we managed to get the internal analysis of it, but only after a ruling by the watchdog and the gov instructing lawyers to block its publication.
“Keir Starmer told me in May that [the Conservatives] should publish it. I asked Number 10 yesterday ‘does he still believe that that is important’, and they didn’t want to get into it.
“Principles of transparency apply across the board, and if you’re going to make these decisions you have to explain why.”
In the same episode, The Express’ Sam Lister highlights how the government refused a Freedom of Information request into how the came up with the black hole figure.
She said: “The Financial Times today has run a story about how it put in a Freedom of Information request asking for details about how they’ve come to this figure.
“It was refused on the basis that the treasury needs more time to make sure the figures are accurate.
“You’d hope that the figures are accurate as they put them out in July and justified the Winter Fuel cuts on the basis of them.”
