Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary has claimed that the Government is “picking the pockets” of pensioners by axing winter fuel payments.
Mel Stride told GB News: “We know that two thirds of pensioners who are living below the poverty line will have the winter fuel payment removed from them as a consequence of what the Government is doing.
“This is a choice. They took a choice when they first came in to give in to their trade union paymasters when it came to wage settlements. So, 22% for the junior doctors, 14% for the train drivers, and so on.
“It is entirely wrong that they should be doing those kinds of things on the backs of some of the most vulnerable pensioners up and down the country.
“The trade unions, Unite in particular, have referred to this Government as picking the pockets of pensioners and I think that's a good way of actually describing it.
“In terms of the uprating of pensions as we go forward, we did indeed bring in the triple lock and we were going to bring in something called the triple lock plus that would have meant that millions of pensioners who will now go into Income Tax for the first time would not have done so.
“But we can't justify taking away this winter fuel payment on the basis that pensioners are getting the appropriate uplifts as other workers do across the economy, and as for the black hole, this £20 billion, that is simply a misnomer.
“This is something that Labour have concocted to roll the pitch for the tax rises that they said they would not be making during the General Election campaign and that we know that Rachel Reeves is now going to bring in at the end of October.”
He added: “The Government didn't want to give us a debate on the winter fuel payment in Parliament. It wants to shove this through very quickly without appropriate scrutiny.
“We are the party in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party, that has secured this debate. I will be leading that debate on the regulations that the Government's attempting to bring in this afternoon and we will also have a second debate, what's called an opposition debate, on exactly the same subject and I will be leading that too.
“We are holding this Government to account and, of course, where we're really going to hold them to account will be when the Budget and the measures there are announced, because I'm afraid that is going to mean huge tax hikes for millions of people up and down the country.”
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
