“I’ve got dementia…I’ve probably got five years. If I’m lucky. I could drop dead now. And to have Keir Starmer do that to us - it’s heartbreaking.”
That was the verdict of just one of the pensioners this lunchtime to the Government’s cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance.
It was chucking it down at the protest organised by the Unite Union but they came anyway. To stand in the pouring rain beneath the Liverpool Wheel.
One elderly lady had brought her friend, Lynn, in a wheelchair. They’ve been friends since they were 15. They are worried about winter: “Last winter we were freezing. And every day we felt iller and iller.”
Pensioners stood in the pouring rain to protest Winter Fuel Payment cuts
GB News
They’re getting soaked just a few hundred metres from where Chancellor Rachel Reeves had just delivered her conference speech, acknowledging the “difficult choices” she was having to take to address the £22billion “black hole” Labour says the Tories left behind.
Stephanie is having none of Reeves’s explanations: “I’m glad my mum's not here because she wouldn't have survived the winter without it.
“It's shocking. It's shocking. Why rob a pensioner? You know, when there are plenty of other means of getting the money?”
But the Chancellor is not budging on her controversial call to take the £200-300 annual payment from ten million of Britain’s pensioners. In the speech, she pointed out that the Triple Lock would ensure that pensioners gain £1,700 this parliament.
POLITICS LATEST:
The Government has also encouraged those entitled to Pension Credit but not currently claiming it, to do so. That automatically entitles someone to the Winter Fuel Allowance.
An estimated 880,000 people are eligible but do not claim. And it can be worth up to £3,900 a year. But the application form is long and complex.
Ironically, if all the people entitled to the Pension Credit claimed it, the £1.4billion a year the Government expects to save from slashing the Winter Fuel Allowance would likely be wiped out.
It’s not just pensioners who are unhappy. The unions are too.
Though glad to have Labour back in power, they are appalled by its actions over the Winter Fuel Allowance.
A Unite rep tells me: “We've got over 100,000 members in Unite the Union that are retired. You can feel the anger, the amount of phone calls and emails we're getting.
“And we want to show our retired members, that the union’s right behind them, we want to send a message to Keir Starmer that he's made a terrible mistake, a huge own goal.”
Sharon Graham, Unite’s General Secretary, is furious that a non-binding vote on the payment has been pushed to the ‘graveyard slot’ on Wednesday, just before conference closes. The Prime Minister will already have left.
She says: “The Labour leaders have tried to silence the voices of pensioners, workers and communities” and accuses them of moving towards “Austerity Mark 2”.
Rachel Reeves today promised no return to austerity.
But Graham predicts “real anger among everyday people”.
