Labour’s raid on winter fuel payments has already cost the taxpayer £380m after a surge in benefits claims, analysts have warned, substantially eating into the £1.4 billion saving claimed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. The Telegraph has the story.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed in July that stripping the winter fuel allowance from some 10 million pensioners would save £1.4 billion a year, citing a £22 billion “black hole” in the public finances.
But analysis suggests a surge in pension credit claims following the Chancellor’s announcement has already wiped out the higher benefits bill budgeted for by the Treasury.
Last year, the Government paid out £5.5 billion in pension credit to 1.35 million households, which Sir Steve Webb, former Pensions Minister, said would make a “dent” in the revenue from the winter fuel raid.
But the furore around Labour’s decision to restrict winter fuel payments to only those in receipt of pension credit spurred thousands of retirees to claim the benefit for the first time.
Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor, told the Telegraph: “Labour’s approach to the increased poverty it is creating is to encourage more pensioners to apply for pension credit. But that is substantially eroding the savings.”
Since Ms. Reeves’s announcement in July, claims to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) surged to an average of around 9,500 a week, compared to a previous level of 4,000, according to DWP figures.
Sir Steve, now a partner at pension consultants LCP, said the previous level of activity kept the pension credit caseload stable, balanced by an inflow of new claimants and an outflow of pensioners dying.
He added: “There is no doubt that the surge in applications for pension credit will reduce the savings from this policy, potentially costing the Government more than £200 million per year in benefits for pensioners.
“But even allowing for this cost, the Chancellor will still see a meaningful saving from taking winter fuel payments away from around 10 million pensioners”.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) budgeted for an additional 95,000 claims in the financial year, assuming an average annual cost per pensioner of £3,800.
It anticipated a surge in applications triggered by the announcement would cost £370 million a year, but analysts Policy in Practice said Labour had not accounted for so-called ‘passported benefits’ linked to pension credit, such as council tax support and free prescriptions.
The company said the true average cost for a pensioner is likely to be £6,800 a year, and that Labour had therefore already spent £388 million on additional benefits. Any further claims in 2025, it said, would eat into the £1.4 billion of savings claimed by Ms. Reeves.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Twenty Labour councillors have quit the party and formed an independent group, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of “abandoning traditional party values”, citing concerns including the decision to strip 10 million pensioners of their winter fuel payments and proposals that would create new “mega councils”. The decision of the councillors on Broxtowe Borough Council in Nottinghamshire means Labour has lost control of the council, with its number of councillors down to six from 26.
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Islam, the beautiful religion of peace, tolerance and moral decency. That’s who our own people and our government sided with when three little girls got slaughtered. Remember that.
The significance of nine years old for Muslims, of course, is that, according to authoritative Islamic tradition, Muhammad consummated his marriage to his child bride Aisha when she was that age.”
Does sex with a 9 year old fall into the definition of paedophilia?
If so? does that not raise some rather awkward questions which, in the current febrile atmosphere of avoiding hate speech, one is hesitant to ask?
I spoke once with a Kenyan Muslim about his having two wives. He explained that when he became a successful farmer, and also a school teacher, the people from the village approached him about a girl of 14 who was the youngest daughter of a poor family. They literally could not afford to feed her, and so he was persuaded to marry her to keep her from destitution. I asked if that also meant that she would have children by him, and he said of course, ‘Who will look after her. Who will farm the fields and feed her when she becomes old’. Now, this applied to a poor farming village in the sticks, but the inference was very much that multiple marriages was a social function for men who could afford to feed two wives and children, and that children were seen initially as their workforce and then in part as their pension.
I don’t suppose any of this really applies to life in the first world but much of the customs and traditions come from a time when survival day to day was very much in question, perhaps as a travelling tribe. The same with Halal and Kosher food rules, in a middle eastern desert a few thousand years ago, they made absolute sense. In the modern west less so, but it is the tradition. It is important to read and understand where these traditions come from, before they are countered by modernity. I see a lot of people spilling bile about how the actions of people living a life we cannot understand, especially well in the past, by comparing it to what we as 21st century westerners think is acceptable. This is really silly. If we went back 500 years and took all your modernity away, don’t kid yourself that you wouldn’t have done whatever it is to survive and keep the family alive, including marrying off your 9 year old..
(Other circumstances and outcomes are possible, and I’m not supporting nor decrying anyone for what they have done. It is simple fact. Downvotes welcome.)
So, because it’s ‘tradition’ we should accept that practice? I don’t think so.
Just because something was the norm a century, two centuries, three centuries ago, doesn’t make it ‘understandable’ today.
Some aspects of some cultures and religions are wrong, flat out wrong, immoral, barbaric, etc. Not all religions and cultures are morally equivalent.
What they propose is legalised paedophilia. This makes those who propose it and those who practise it disgusting.
Did I say that we should..? I gave some details of a first hand conversation with someone giving me their genuine reasons. I have said nothing about Iraq or the lowering of the marriage age or about Islam in general. I said we should understand the traditions and their origins, without viewing them totally through the moral lens of our current Western society.
It’s not “…spilling bile about [the] actions of people living a life we cannot understand…]
It *is* pointing out the disgusting immoral actions of lots of the human race, whether they are being guided by religion, culture or tradition.
Hear hear! Next the women-haters will want to bring back the ‘ducking pond’. That was an accepted practice too many years ago. But they still bury women half way in the ground then stone them to death in some countries. This Swedish Deputy PM has the right idea. It’s bad enough the things that go on over there but we don’t want any of that Middle Ages barbaric nonsense over here;
”Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Ebba Busch said:
“Islam needs to adapt to Swedish values”.
“Muslims who do not adapt their practice of Islam should return.”
“honor culture, clan structures, beheading, the stoning of women or homosexuals and Sharia law do not belong here.””
https://x.com/AzatAlsalim/status/1822266602898780255
I refer you to the answer I gave above.
You seem to be arguing that we should accept (and respect) medieval or even more primitive traditions from “certain cultures” when – at the same time, we are told that “our primitive customs” are completely unacceptable and (in the case of slavery, carried out by virtually every society on earth) we alone are responsible and reparations must be paid to other countries who also participated in the practice.
Two-tier approaches to traditions ….. how very topical.
I am sure plenty of comments here have refuted your statement. Tradition evolves. If we follow tradition all the way to Biblical times, we would practise fratricide (Kane and Abel), vigilantism (en eye for en eye)….there wouldn’t be law and order, sanction like prison, punishment, education system, and most importantly, societal cohesion based on the above. Young children are not allowed to get married before they have become adults. That’s why almost all countries today have a minimum age. Ditto for driving. Otherwise societies will become chaotic and disorderly.
Yes – if child marriage counts as part of “Islamness” under the new legal definition, it would seem to be a good defence of paedophilia that the prosecution itself is an Islamophobic crime. Case dismissed, DPP jailed. Result.
To be honest, I just presumed this was the case already in many if not all majority Muslim countries, given that they all largely adhere to the Koran like it’s an instruction manual and whatever their paedo Prophet says goes. Sick, vile and nasty…the ultimate example of misogyny and patriarchy. The worst thing is I’ve seen loads of Muslims ( Imams and regular Muslims who have a large following ) in the UK broadcasting the fact online that they agree with this and they defend it, no doubt they’d do it themselves if it weren’t against the law;
”Marrying young girls was not all that unusual in Muhammad’s time. But because, in Islam, Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this even today. Iraq will not be alone in making Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.
Yet despite all this, worldwide organizations dedicated to ending child marriage universally fail to acknowledge its justifications in Islam. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights never mentions Islam in connection with child marriage. UNICEF doesn’t, either. Nor does the international network Girls Not Brides.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/progress-iraq-moves-to-legalize-pedophilia/
Worth noting that Aisha was nine (or ten, by some reckoning) when first “married” by the Prophet (blessings be upon him).
But she had been given to him when just six (or seven by some reckoning).
Fortunately, being perfect in all things and, indeed, the perfect gentleman, he had contented himself between her little thighs before marriage.
Note that in at least one case in an English court, one defendant pointed out when, with his mates, accused of gang statutory rape, that his conduct was by way of seeking to emulate the “perfect” one.
The judge, obviously one of those few remaining far-right thugs bussed into court, was lamentably unpersuaded. Although it seems very likely that the glorious and honest DPP (blessings be upon him), had his fingers in his ears because as he pointed out, he was totally unaware of what was going on in towns and cities across the UK.
“ordinary Muslims is, can they stop the seventh century intruding so brutally on the 21st?”
That ship sailed some time ago.
Ordinary? Who they?
Not the R word – cultural enrichment.
Of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the World only 15% to 25% of Muslims are radical leaving the majority, between 75% and 85%, as peaceful. To put it another way that means there are between 180 million and 300 million radical Muslims that are dedicated to the destruction of the West. With open borders I’m guessing it becomes easier to know these radicals are?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3NzkAOo3s
Brigitte Gabriel gives FANTASTIC answer to Muslim woman claiming all Muslims are portrayed badly
“A conservative coalition forming the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament…”
Conservative? Now would that be Far Right or Far Left or Centre-something? I get so confused these days.
Far right of the extremist left in the phobic center.
You’re not helping.
Ambidextrous?
The earlier age group just ‘legalises’ the incest that no one wants to talk about.
I assume that this system – girls being obliged to marry at 9 – will come to Britain very quickly. After all, our anti-white government does nothing about FGM, so there seems to be no reason for it not to help multiculturalism (and its favourite client group) by introducing marriage at nine-years of age. (And, for those anti-whitists from the government who might be reading this, I’d just like to say how wonderful and sublime Islam is, and how morally and spiritually superior all Muslims are.)
Great news for the kiddy fiddlers
They’re be converting to the Religion of Peace in droves. (Sorry, I meant to say the sublime and magnificent Religion of Peace.)
Yes, All Saville had to do was convert to Islam and marry 4 of them.
Is this article Islamophobic? Shall we ask Mr Sadiq Khan?
“Increasingly it seems that a key question for ordinary Muslims is, can they stop the seventh century intruding so brutally on the 21st?”
No, the key question is “Do they even want to?” Increasingly, it seems that “ordinary Muslims” don’t want to civilise.
Britain next?
Men from these cultures are arriving in boats on our shores, to almost a heroes welcome in Dover. They don’t just physically arrive, they bring with them their ideas of women’s roles in society. This makes for a dangerous situation for all our women and girls, and puts us all at great risk.