COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Middle-class pensioners are to lose benefits under Conservative plans to fund social care, Theresa May will announce on Thursday



The Conservative manifesto will set out plans to begin means-testing winter fuel payments and to charge more people who currently receive free care in their own home.

The money saved from means-testing the annual heating handout, worth up to £300, will be used to help close the £2.8 billion social care funding gap.

The Conservatives will also pass legislation to ensure nobody has to sell their home to pay for their care during their lifetime, and new rules will allow pensioners needing nursing home treatment to keep more of their assets.

The flagship policy marks a gamble as it risks angering core older Tory supporters. David Cameron repeatedly pledged to maintain universal pensioner benefits, but Mrs May’s team believes that pensioners can no longer be fully protected from austerity.

On Wednesday it was unclear whether the Prime Minister would also abandon the so-called triple-lock, which guarantees a rise in the state pension every year.

Writing in Thursday's Telegraph, Mrs May defends the welfare cuts by saying she is prepared to “take the big, difficult decisions that are right for our country in the long term”.

Acknowledging that her plans will prove unpopular with some pensioners, the Prime Minister will say: “People are rightly sceptical of politicians who claim to have easy answers to deeply complex problems. It is the responsibility of leaders to be straight with people about the challenges ahead and the hard work required to overcome them.”

By means-testing winter fuel payments, which were introduced by Gordon Brown in 1997 and stand at £200 (rising to £300 for over-80s), the Conservatives could save more than £1.7 billion if they restrict the payments only to those who are classed as living in fuel poverty.

In 2015 Labour proposed a similar, but less far-reaching policy that would have removed the benefit from pensioners in higher tax brackets. It was criticised by the Tories at the time, who said it was unfair on those who had already retired.

rebbonk wrote:I would suggest that this has just cost the Tories quite a large slice of the 'grey' vote.

Labour says curbs on winter fuel payments 'sick and sneaky'



Plans to limit the number of pensioners who get winter fuel payments are "sick and sneaky", Labour has claimed.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said 10 million people would be hit by Tory proposals to means-test the allowance.

The current universal provision was the "basis of the welfare state" and moving away from it would hit the poorest and worsen fuel poverty, he told the BBC.

At the moment, households automatically receive a single payment, ranging from £100 to £300, each December if there is one person living there who has reached the qualifying age and who meets other criteria.

About 12.26 million people received the tax-free allowance in 2015-6, at a total cost of just over £2bn.

Under plans in the Conservative manifesto, eligibility would be related to income - although the party has not indicated what the threshold would be and who would qualify.

But Mr McDonnell told the BBC that the scale of the money that the Conservatives hoped to raise - which he said was in the region of £1.5bn each year - suggested all those who did not qualify for pension credit could lose their allowances, hitting millions of those on low and middle incomes.

"This means 10 million pensioners waking up this morning to the fact they could lose their allowance.

"Let me explain why I think is absolutely sick and sneaky.

"A third of people who qualify for pensioner credits don't claim.

"We also have 1.7 million pensioners in this country living in poverty, a million of them in fuel poverty...30,000 excess deaths every winter as a result of fuel poverty and basically people not being able to heat their homes."

But figures obtained by the BBC found just 29 pensioners decided to decline their fuel allowance in 2014-5.

In their 2015 manifesto, Labour proposed taking fuel allowance away from the wealthiest 5% of pensioners.

But Mr McDonnell said he was "really angry" that the universal principle of welfare support for pensioners, which has been upheld by successive governments, was now being threatened.

"We have a universal benefit at the moment. Why? We know that as soon as you start means-testing, a lot of people don't claim even though they need it because it is so complicated."

Labour have said the means-testing of fuel allowances, allied to the ending of the "triple lock" guarantee for pension spending and reforms to social care rules, amounted to a "triple whammy" for pensioners.

Even the Scottish Tory leader thinks Theresa May's plan to cut winter fuel payments is wrong



Theresa May has caved in to demands from the Scottish Tories, that they be exempted from cuts to the winter fuel allowance - because, apparently, it's cold in Scotland.

The Tory leader unveiled her UK manifesto yesterday, announcing plans to means test the allowance, which pensioners can claim for heating expenses.

Labour's John McDonnell branded the cut "sneaky" and an attack on vulnerable pensioners struggling to make ends meet.

But the Scottish Tory manifesto, launched this morning, not only doesn't include the cut, it proudly announces they will "protect" Scotland from their own party's policies.

Social security devolution allows us to make different choices in Scotland and so we will protect universal Winter Fuel Payments for all older people and they will not be subject to means-testing."

Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson says Scottish Tories have made a "different choice".

She told Sky News: "We’ve made a different choice in Scotland in our Scottish manifesto today. We believe there shouldn’t be means testing for the winter fuel payment.”

Tory Scottish Secretary David Mundell's excuse for changing it was quite something:

He said: "The specific view in relation to Scotland is that, obviously we have different climatic issues."

That's right, Scotland gets to keep universal fuel allowance because it's cold up here.

And Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: "The Tories are utter hypocrites. How can they take cash off English pensioners and then give it to Scottish pensioners? It looks like a cheap election bung and it won't wash.

"It is utterly scandalous that the Conservatives want to axe the triple lock and now do this. Theresa May and her ministers are just taking pensioners and their votes for granted. They don't seem to care about them.

"David Mundell then turns himself into a fourth rate Michael Fish to blame the climate of Scotland as a rationale for all this. They are just taking voters for a ride."

Theresa May has caved in to demands...

Conservative manifesto: Lack of costings leave blanks to be filled in



The Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell says he's angry the Conservatives haven't given out full costings for their manifesto.

Labour of course, did show us their sums at their launch earlier in the week, and they are on the warpath.

The Tories are vulnerable to claims their plans would hit millions of people, because they will not give out the details of how their plans would actually work.

On the winter fuel allowance, for example, experts like the Resolution Foundation believe the only realistic way to introduce means testing is to limit the benefit to pensioners who get pensions credit.

To do otherwise would be an administrative palaver, would create costs and would only give limited savings.

But use that system, and five out of six pensioners would lose out, which translates to 10 million people - yes, you read that right, 10 million.

In that scenario, only people entitled to pension credit would keep the benefit - those with a family income of less than £159.35 a week if they're on their own, or £243.45 for couples.

Tory sources suggest that is not the intention at all, that they will create a new means test instead, implying that the numbers won't be as large.

But they won't give any more detail than that; the plan is instead to produce a draft version of the new rules, a Green Paper, if they win, and then consult on the best way to do it.

Without being specific of course, they do leave themselves open to suspicions about their true intentions.