Category: Rachel Reeves
Owen Jones on Starmer’s Labour party stopping 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. Morning Star Editorial: The 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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Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives. Chancellor faces down would-be rebels ahead of winter fuel payment vote
‘If we show that economic stability is the hallmark of Labour governments, there is no limit to what we can achieve,’ Reeves told Labour MPs. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Rachel Reeves tells Labour MPs that axing allowance for all but poorest pensioners will help plug £22bn hole in finances
The chancellor has faced down would-be rebels in a private meeting of Labour MPs ahead of the crunch vote on the government’s controversial plan to scrap the winter fuel allowance.
Rachel Reeves told a gathering of the parliamentary Labour party that the move was necessary, despite fears about the impact on millions of less-well-off pensioners, as it would help to plug a £22bn gap in the public finances.
She also warned that there would be more difficult decisions to make on the economy, despite dozens of Labour MPs considering abstaining in Tuesday’s vote to cut the £300-a-year payment for all but the poorest pensioners.
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Government insiders ruled out any prospect of the Treasury offering any concession on the policy, despite the depth of concern from figures across the party. Many MPs are worried that elderly constituents just above the threshold will suffer.
Keir Starmer, meanwhile, is set to stick to the same theme by doubling down on the government’s tough economic message in a major speech to the Trades Union Congress, where he will say that “hard graft” is necessary to turn around the public finances.
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Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives. The dishonesty of Rachel Reeves
Cut to winter fuel payment could kill 4,000 people, Labour’s own research suggests
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/winter-fuel-payment-cut-labour-deaths-b2609340.html
Analysis published by Labour in 2017 said plans to means test winter fuel payments would be the ‘single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation’
Thousands of pensioners could die if the government proceeds with its plan to cut winter fuel payments for those not on benefits, Labour’s own research suggested.
Analysis published in 2017, when Sir Keir Starmer was in the Shadow Cabinet, warned that Conservative plans to cut the fuel allowance for ten million pensioners would increase excess deaths by 3,850 that winter.
The proposal, put forward by Theresa May’s government, was dubbed the “single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation in our country”.
The report has resurfaced just weeks after Rachel Reeves announced that older people not in receipt of pension credits or other means-tested benefits will no longer receive winter fuel payments from this year onwards.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/winter-fuel-payment-cut-labour-deaths-b2609340.html
dizzy: I would expect the figure to have increased from 4,000 since energy prices have increased so much since 2017.
The dishonesty of Rachel Reeves
Labour refuses to publish impact assessment of winter fuel payment cuts until after MPs have voted
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/winter-fuel-payment-starmer-reeves-b2609520.html
Independent Exclusive: Energy minister Miatta Fahnbulleh confirmed her department has assessed the impact the policy change will have on pensioners living in fuel poverty, but said only that it will be published ‘in due course’
The government has assessed the number of people who will be pushed into fuel poverty by its winter fuel payment cuts, but will not publish the figures until after MPs vote on the measure, The Independent can reveal.
Answering a parliamentary question from former Labour frontbencher John McDonnell, energy minister Miatta Fahnbulleh confirmed her department has assessed the impact the policy change will have on pensioners living in fuel poverty.
But, asked by Mr McDonnell and The Independent, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero refused to say when the document would be published, only promising that it would be “in due course”.
Her answer suggests that while the department has carried out the analysis, it will not be published until after MPs have voted on the measure. Mr McDonnell said “it is no way to implement policy” and he is “fearful of the impact on those who will be put at serious risk”.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/winter-fuel-payment-starmer-reeves-b2609520.html
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives. The dishonesty of Rachel Reeves
