Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to change course as campaigners warned of the electoral consequences of failing to restore winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners
Keir Starmer is facing an angry backlash after ruling out a U-turn on cuts to winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
Labour MPs urged the PM to change course as campaigners warned of the electoral consequences of failing to restore payments. It came after the Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted public anger over cuts to winter fuel hurt Labour at last week’s local elections. It has been blamed by Labour MPs as a key issue in the party’s bruising defeat to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the previously safe seat of Runcorn and Helsby.
But on Tuesday Downing Street ruled out a U-turn or any change to thresholds after reports of a re-think of the £11,500 cut-off for the allowance. They said the decision of Chancellor Rachel Reeves last summer to means-test the payment was “difficult” but “one the government had to take” to repair the economy.
The PM’s official spokesman said: “The policy is set out. There will not be a change to the government policy, which set out the difficult decision we had to take to ensure economic stability, repair the public finances following the £22billion blackhole left by the previous government.”
Pressed further, they said: “The government has set out its policies and the reasons behind these policies and there is no change to the government policy and will not be a change to the government’s policy.
Asked about reported changes to the threshold so more pensioners would be eligible, the PM’s spokesman added: “We set out the policy and there is no change. There is no change to that policy. As I say it was a difficult decision to means-test winter fuel payments but it was one we had to do to restore economic stability and repair public finances.”
But Dennis Reid, from the Silver Voices campaign group, said the government should “admit the mistake” and restore the payments before next winter. Failing to do so will mean the issue of winter fuel will continue to be an “electoral millstone around Labour’s neck” for years to come, he added.
He told The Mirror : “It will become the totemic Starmer poll tax equivalent. There is full public support for a restoration as was shown on the doorsteps in the local elections and a little tinkering with the eligibility levels will be insufficient.”
Ian Byrne, the Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby, said: “A tone deaf response from Labour spokespeople. If we don’t respond to this and change people’s lives for the better with policies that transform the economic situation many working class people find themselves in after 14 years of austerity we are literally rolling the red carpet out to Reform.
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“The leadership needs to reflect and change course or the country will face the consequences of a far-right government.”
And the left-wing Labour MP Jon Trickett told The Mirror: “No 10 needs to think again. Cutting winter fuel to pensioners was a retrograde step in ethical , economic and political terms. Labour can be better than this.”
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, posted on X: “Nothing short of a total U-turn on cuts to winter fuel payments and disability benefits will get this government back on track. We need a complete policy reset.” In a speech on Tuesday Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan also aid the issue is “something that comes up time and again” with voters. She added: “I hope the UK Government will rethink this policy.”
Mr Starmer’s press secretary insisted on Tuesday the government will not be “blown off course” after last week’s grim local election results for Labour. They added: “We were elected as a stable and serious party after 14 years of chaos and decline.We won’t be blown off course and it’s that mindset and focus that has allowed us to make the progress we have.”
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