Has the government ‘scrapped’ cost of living support for pensioners?

During Head of state’s Questions last week Leader of the Opposition Rishi Sunak MP asserted that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, had actually “scrapped” both the Wintertime Fuel Settlement and “numerous extra pounds of additional expense of living support” received by pensioners under the Conventional federal government in 2014.

The federal government estimates that around 2.3 million pensioners are eligible for Pension plan Credit scores, of whom around 880,000 don’t declare it. Most of the 11.4 million pensioners that obtained the Winter Fuel Payment in 2022/23 (the latest year for which information is offered) will certainly no longer obtain it.

The Conservative event’s 2024 basic election manifesto vowed to “preserve all current pensioner benefits, including complimentary bus passes, Winter season Gas Payments, complimentary prescriptions and TV permits”, however did not reference the Cost of Living Payment.

It is true that most of pensioners will no more get the Winter months Fuel Settlement (which offers ₤ 200 or ₤ 300 to aid pay for home heating expenses over the cold weather) from this wintertime complying with a choice taken by the federal government to means-test the settlement announced in July.

These payments, which were additionally made to pensioners in 2022/23, were called a “one-off” by the federal government, and in November 2023 Mims Davies MP– at the time a priest at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)– confirmed there were “currently no plans to prolong the Expense of Living Settlements past the Spring”. There was also no reference of prolonging these repayments in the Traditional federal government’s Spring Budget. The DWP validated to Full Fact the 2022/23 and 2023/24 repayments were ‘one-offs’, without any strategies to proceed the collection of settlements in 2024/25.

This isn’t fairly. While the majority of pensioners will no more get the Wintertime Gas Payment, some are still eligible for it. It’s also not clear that there were prepare for added Pensioner Cost of Living Payments that Work has selected not to proceed with, while the House Assistance Fund has actually been prolonged by the federal government until following year.

So we can’t discover details proof that further Pensioner Price of Living Settlements were planned, ahead of the general election, for the coming winter season, that the incoming Labour government ultimately “ditched”.