Benefits push over changes to winter fuel payments

Ministers have launched a pension credit publicity campaign to minimise the impact of the Labour government's decision to radically restrict winter fuel payments.

- Aletha Adu

Last month, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, introduced a means test for the payments, a universal benefit available to all pensioners since 1997, so only those on pension credit would qualify, as part of the "difficult decisions" she had to make having inherited a "dire state of public finances" from the Conservatives.

Reeves insists the government's commitment to support pensioners remains, and cited the maintenance of the triple lock as an example of this.

But the government has faced mounting criticism, and calls for the means-testing of winter fuel payments to be reversed, amid warnings that the move could risk millions of pensioners being forced to choose between eating a hot meal or turning on their heating this winter.

More than 370,000 people have signed Age UK's petition alone, calling on the government to save the winter fuel payment, which was cut "with virtually no notice and no compensatory measures to protect poor and vulnerable pensioners".