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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If you follow one Substack, make it David’s – “News from Uncibal”.
His articles on the hell we are descending to are spot on, and his prose is excellent.
They don’t give a toss about Birkenhead!
Or “the planet” for that matter.
Nobody cares about ‘the planet’, even/especially people who say it is their prime concern
I think that’s broadly true. I think in the little things I try to avoid wantonly wasteful or destructive behaviours because they seem wrong to me – I guess that “helps the planet” but that’s not really how I think of them. I would be against concreting over the entire planet, killing every living thing except us, that kind of stuff – but none of those things are likely to happen. I tend to think that if humans are left alone to get on with things, we will find a sensible approach to “the planet” – the population looks like it will settle down or maybe even reduce eventually, and we will make more efficient use of the resources we have, and find new ones.
As a rule of thumb, I don’t trust people that claim to want to help people they don’t personally know. And even less so people that claim to want to make the world a better place. At best, these people are completely delusional about their capabilities.
Charles Dickens would have agreed with you.
The people who claim to want to “save the planet” couldn’t just care less if Birkenhead and it’s inhabitants sank into the sea never to be seen again. Deep down, they’d actually prefer it happened.
Tell me I’m not right.
You’re basically right, although some genuinely convince themselves that they care (an aspect of their delusional nature). And btw “its” not “it’s.”
What a stupendously good article; well-written and perceptive. Unfortunately, under the present Government I can only see Dr McGrogan’s more pessimistic observations becoming unpleasantly true.
God help us all.
You have said it for me.
Probably Dr McGrogan’s best article for DS. Sadly, I was quite able to transpose Oldham for Birkenhead. Our town has been in decline for over thirty years and ably abetted by a Labour run Coucil which is all but the definition of a mafia outfit. Over the last five years we have seen a massive influx of brown and not so brown skinned Gimmigrants and the town centre is now nothing but a slowly evolving Bangladeshi bazaar otherwise known as a shit hole.
Long gone are the days when Platt Bros ran the biggest engineering plant in the world employing over 15,000 people over many acres and when Oldham was rightly celebrated as King Cotton.
To say I am filled with hate for the politicians of the last twenty five years would be an understatement.
Frank Field ….. one of Labour’s more respectable MPs and sadly no longer with us ….. represented Birkenhead for years. He managed to do nothing to stop the decline.
There isn’t a hope in Hades of the Champagne Socialist Student Union Marxists currently in Government doing it.
“Britain is, manifestly and with alarming rapidity, declining.”
Absolutely. You have to be blind not to see it.
You can see in even in the affluent areas. I live near Cambridge, a high-tech growth area. Go for a walk in the city centre after the shops close and look around.
Yes, this is a sharply accurate but very depressing piece of writing. But how can the people in charge of our country not be aware?
I am sure “the people in charge” are more than aware. Actually I imagine they would regard articles such as this as an emblem of their success.
Agreed – they are aware, and they don’t care
I live in a fairly affluent area in the West Country. My immediate area still resembles the England-of-old although we are now steadily “being enriched” by “diversity” …. most of which, I suspect, is claiming welfare judging by their appearance.
If you venture into the local main town centre the decline is obvious and much the same as elsewhere in the country: boarded up shops; beggars on the streets; “diverse” Big Issue sellers a low-level air of menace.
It’s only a matter of time …..
A superb article indeed.
But how tragic it is necessary.
‘Why Is Labour Focusing on Saving the Planet?’
It isn’t.
It is stealing your money, your liberty, your energy, ability to travel and – by dropping voter ID – your democracy.
Can we start calling Starmer’s reign what it really is please?
“We do not seem, collectively or individually, to have any ideas whatsoever about how to stop this decline, let alone reverse it, nor the wherewithal to put such ideas into effect.”
For me the place to start is secondary school education, whose dire state (for the majority) is captured by the BBC series “The 4 o’clock club”, where the cool kids are the ones that get detention, and where the star actors get jobs as hairdressers and caretakers when they get too old to be pupils.
The other side of the coin is that you get to be one of the elite by going to uni and “studying” some enjoyable but useless subject such as ancient Greek poetry.
Studying PPE is very popular especially if you skip the E lectures given the stupidity of our politicians.
Thank you Dr McGrogan. Over 40 years ago I was at Liverpool University in a department that overlooked a demolition site. Bricks and rubble remained unmoved for three years. Students I knew lived in terraced houses with front doors opening to ripped wallpaper hanging off walls swathed in damp and mould.
I’ve only been back to Albert Dock since – much changed from the decline and dereliction of 40+ years ago. I once took the ferry across the Mersey, but only got as far as Hamilton Square.
I played cricket in Sefton Park and travelled to away matches at clubs like Formby, Hightown and Neston, prosperous localities where senior university academics tended to live. I’ve revisited cricket grounds on the Wirral in recent years and the ambience seems relatively unchanged.
Then, as now, two utterly different sets of enclaves existed. From family history research on the urban area I originate from, I’m getting the impression prosperity and poverty co-existed in closer geographic proximity in the eras before the Second World War.
I digress. You’re quite right – for want of a better term, the governing classes are more wedded to sluicing away public money on tilting at windmills than on improving the lot of the governed. As ever, follow the money.
Groupthink abounds. Higher education seems rife with it. Let’s all feel world-leading about spaffing another £22 billion on sequestering the trace atmospheric gas essential for life on earth.
Betrayal of an unspoken fundamental hippocratic oath of government.
I had to spend a day in Birkenhead. The only shop we could find was a Kwiksave. It had no windows, security men, but no fresh food whatsoever. For the nearby high-rise flat dwellers I guess it was the sole source of sustenance. One of the most deeply dispiriting days of my life.
The Planet™ is a distraction. What Labour is really doing is extract money from the British public to make Labour donors like Dale Vince insanely rich and for political pet projects of the UN. They like to claim that they need to save the planet (certainly no megalomania here) because they want to avoid that people notice that they’re really just making Birkenhead etc an even worse place and absolutely intentionally so.
Members of the arrogant, virtue-signalling, hypocritical Westminster Uni-Party and the wider Establishment would do well to read Kipling’s poem “The Beginnings” ….. better known as “When the English began to hate.”
Obviously they’d have to hold their snobbish little noses first and they’ll need counselling afterwards, but they’d do well to pay attention ….. because those are the circumstances they’ve created.
You could say the same about most other towns in the North West whose industries, hence their entire raison d’etre, have disappeared. If you think Birkenhead’s bad, take a walk down Fleetwood’s high street on an average Saturday afternoon. I do the walk not to window shop the boarded up units, charity shops and fast food joints but because I refuse to be intimidated by the roaming drunks and smack heads, I cling on to the memory of when it was a good place to live in. It must be terrifying for old ladies and women with prams though so onward and downward the plug hole go the last flickers of commercial life.
I too hope for a peaceful resolution to all this. We always manage one eventually but how long can cheap heroin and booze keep the lid on the volcano of wasted lives?
I really don
t recognise the negative description of Birkenhead. I was shopping in the town centre just after Christmas and it was a pleasant experience. All the main banks are still there. I live in West Kirby, a prosperous seaside town on the opposite side of the Wirral. I moved here 30 years ago and we had 6 banks, we now have none. The North End I drove past is mainly smart new housing; the council has just relocated many of their staff into 2 new office blocks right in the town centre which should be a boost to local business. Yes, there are a fair few vacant units but everywhere was clean and well swept.t see any beggars or homeless tents which are in great evidence in other town centres. Hate to sound like a Wirral Council PR chap but I am only detailing what I see. As a near 70 year old I wouldn`t go near the place if it was anything like the author of this piece describesI didn
One of the most perceptive articles I’ve read in a long time. Similarly, Sandown, IoW, just a few short miles from the affluent town of Cowes, is a run-down, depressing slum. It sounds very like Birkenhead. Hard to explain why such degradation should exist on what is a relatively prosperous island.