benefits

Charities demand to meet UK ministers as 1.6m disabled OAPs set to lose winter fuel payments

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/15/charities-demand-to-meet-uk-ministers-as-16m-disabled-oaps-set-to-lose-winter-fuel-payments

A pensioner struggles to keep warm at home. Photograph: Studio Romantic/Shutterstock

Call comes after government forced to reveal that 71% of pensioners with disabilities will lose entitlement despite dependence on warmer homes

Groups representing disabled people are demanding urgent meetings with ministers after it was revealed that 1.6 million pensioners with disabilities will lose their winter fuel payments because of government cuts.

The figures were released by the Department for Work and Pensions on Friday evening, in answer to a freedom of information request, despite the government having said it had done no official impact assessment on the policy. The internal DWP analysis also suggested that nine in 10 pensioners aged between 66 and 79, and eight out of 10 over-80s would lose their allowance.

Since those over 80 receive a higher payment – £300 as opposed to £200 – they would take the greatest financial hit, the document said.

The analysis revealed that although people with disabilities were more likely to retain the payment, 71% – 1.6 million – would still lose their entitlement, despite their greater dependence on heating their homes.

The analysis also estimated that of the 880,000 pensioners entitled to pension credit but who do not claim the benefit, only 100,000 are expected to sign up to it as a result of a government campaign now under way, meaning about 780,000 pensioners on low incomes would continue to miss out.

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/sep/15/charities-demand-to-meet-uk-ministers-as-16m-disabled-oaps-set-to-lose-winter-fuel-payments

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingCharities demand to meet UK ministers as 1.6m disabled OAPs set to lose winter fuel payments

Labour votes to plunge pensioners into poverty

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Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-votes-plunge-pensioners-poverty

SUPINE Labour MPs have voted to plunge pensioners into poverty, after approving winter fuel benefit cuts for millions of older people.

The Commons backed Sir Keir Starmer’s austerity move by 348 votes to 228, with many Labour MPs abstaining.

A larger-than-expected 53 Labour MPs seem to have not backed the government in the vote, although some may have had permission from the whips to skip the debate.

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John McDonnell, speaking in the brief debate which preceded the vote, said that the cut “flies against everything I believe in as a Labour MP about tackling inequality and poverty within our society.”

He slammed the government’s claim that those with the “broadest shoulders” should bear the burden of the crisis, saying that it was the poorest who have been hit hardest.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-votes-plunge-pensioners-poverty

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingLabour votes to plunge pensioners into poverty

Morning Star Editorial: The labour movement should call out Chancellor Reeves’ economy con

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-labour-movement-should-call-out-chancellor-reeves-economy-con

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a press conference following her statement to the House of Commons on the findings of the Treasury audit into the state of the public finances, July 29, 2024.

RACHEL REEVES is having us on. She is not prolonging austerity for the reasons pretended.

The Chancellor claims that it is imperative to balance the books to avoid a collapse in international money market confidence in the British economy. The ghosts of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are conjured to underline the point.

It is for this reason that pensioners are to shiver in unheated homes this winter as their fuel allowance is cut, and it is for this that hundreds of thousands of children are to remain in poverty, thanks to the maintenance of the two-child benefit cap.

But even in its own terms — and this column would argue that the speculators should be faced down rather than pandered to under any circumstances — the argument is bogus.

The City itself, no less, has blown the whistle on Reeves and other Cabinet members who have echoed her line, including Commons leader Lucy Powell. Powell told the media that the new austerity was vital to stop a run on the pound.

A what? The Financial Times quotes a Paul Dale at Capital Economics as saying: “If there was a risk of a run on the pound I completely missed it.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-labour-movement-should-call-out-chancellor-reeves-economy-con

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: The labour movement should call out Chancellor Reeves’ economy con

The billions for Sizewell C show Labour’s shameful nuclear hypocrisy

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/billions-sizewell-c-show-labours-shameful-nuclear-hypocrisy

LINDA PENTZ GUNTER condemns Starmer’s willingness to let children go hungry and the elderly shiver while pouring billions into doomed nuclear projects that won’t address the climate crisis

THE Keir Starmer Labour government won’t scrap the two-child benefit cap because, it claims, the country can’t afford it. Doing away with this punitive measure would lift close to half a million children out of poverty at an estimated cost of £3.6 billion a year.

On the other hand, the Starmer government is perfectly happy to scrap the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, because doing so saves money — an estimated £1.4bn this financial year. That potentially life-saving support will now be stripped from as many as 10 million eligible pensioners.

That’s £5bn saved, on the backs of children and the elderly, two of the most vulnerable segments of our society.

Instead, the Labour government has now announced it will assign almost this identical sum — as much as £5.5bn in life support — to the planned 3,200 megawatt (MW) two-reactor Sizewell C nuclear power plant project on the Suffolk coast.

Apparently, it’s perfectly fine to let children go hungry while pensioners shiver in the dark in exchange for an entirely futile energy project that will keep no-one warm anytime soon, if at all.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/billions-sizewell-c-show-labours-shameful-nuclear-hypocrisy

Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingThe billions for Sizewell C show Labour’s shameful nuclear hypocrisy

Torygraph catches up to Reeves’s lack of due care – almost a year after Skwawkbox

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Labour’s disdain for conducting impact assessments on the effects of its cuts and austerity reaches the ‘MSM’ – 11 months after Skwawkbox exclusively revealed it

The Telegraph has today reported that right-wing Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves carried out ‘no impact assessment’ before ‘withdrawing winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, the Telegraph can reveal’.

The right-wing rag is a little late to the party. Skwawkbox revealed exclusively eleven months ago that Labour undertook no impact for any of its plans on vulnerable people, whether pensioners, the disabled, the poor, the ill or children.

Tragically, the revelation was correct and Labour has begun to implement its red-Tory austerity – supposedly to fix the blue-Tory austerity that wrecked the country – as soon as it was ushered into power by the fascist Reform ‘party’ despite receiving far fewer votes than in 2017 and even the supposed ‘disaster’ of 2019 under Corbyn.

And the party is even trying to cover up how many people the blue-Tory policies killed, presumably so its hands are freer to impose fresh misery and death without scrutiny – as if the UK’s ‘mainstream’ media does much scrutiny in the first place.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

Continue ReadingTorygraph catches up to Reeves’s lack of due care – almost a year after Skwawkbox