Labour's winter fuel payments move is a raid on pensioners' pockets - Sarah Todd

Yes, he explained, our new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has ruled that older people who are not in receipt of pension credit or certain other means-tested benefits will no longer receive the winter fuel payment.

Then, without missing a beat, he said it might be possible for anybody struggling to make ends meet when it comes to keeping warm to claim a pension top-up.

In fact, he cheerfully told viewers, there are an estimated 880,000 low-income pensioner households eligible for pension credit that currently fail to claim it. What interesting information.

Then, wait for it, he signs off with the glib advice that: “Further information is available at www.gov.uk.”

Does he, or anybody else, really believe that the sort of pensioners sat there with one-bar of an old electric heater, three jumpers on and a hot water bottle are going to have a laptop or a modern mobile phone with internet access?

What an absolute and utter joke. In fact, in this correspondent’s opinion, the internet has been the biggest cop-out of our lifetimes.

Oh yes, it has its uses. How wonderful that families who live on opposite sides of the world can communicate with the press of a button. To keep to the theme of the older generation, what a joy to ‘see’ grandchildren growing up in far flung places.

But such technology, like an iPad for those weekly video calls, requires a certain amount of affluence and somebody to set it up and show how it works.

Those in positions of authority such as teachers, doctors - and especially politicians - have become too distanced from the real world. Without thinking they rattle out “visit www….” as if all pupils and parents, patients and constituents have a hotline to Google.

While many are happy to sit slack-jawed interacting with a computer keyboard those that aren’t shouldn’t be discriminated against. Yes, thinking aloud, those that don’t ‘do’ the internet are a minority; marginalised and swept under the carpet.

While all older people might not have access to the internet what they do have, unlike so many of the scrounging younger generation, is pride.

It will be a difficult concept for many to grasp, but admitting there isn’t any spare money to keep the heating turned on and asking for help will go against the grain for a certain section of our population.

It’s hard not to wonder whether flicking the off switch on the winter fuel payment will be the thin end of the wedge when it comes to Labour and older people. Has Ms Reeves got her eye on other perks like their free bus passes?

Just the other day we met a gentleman of a certain age with a tiny single-man tent. He had got on the bus in Leeds and used his pass to travel to North Yorkshire for free and, because of this, was able to justify his pitch fee and the odd bite to eat at local cafes.

He took a few bits and bobs of shopping home and was visibly boosted by all the people he had chatted to. He might not have been on the breadline, but that’s not the point. That free bus pass provided the key that got him out of the house and spending a bit of money with small rural businesses.

Life isn’t cut and dried and so often it’s the squeezed middle, the group of people in society who have worked hard and saved but have less money than before to buy the things they need because prices have risen but their incomes have stayed the same, who end up with the mucky end of the stick.

Labour has already admitted it won’t implement a social care cap. It was way back in 1997 that Tony Blair promised to end the system where older people were forced to sell their homes to pay for their care but each successive Government has failed to grasp the nettle when it comes to this.

Just because older people don’t take to the streets rioting in balaclavas (would they be hand-knitted?) or make nasty threats on social media they shouldn’t become easy targets to be robbed blind.

One good thing to come out of this purge on pensioners payments may well be that for the first time in donkeys’ years the Conservative party is agreeing on something.

All six of the Tory leadership candidates are united in calling for the axe on winter payments to be reversed.

Amid the ongoing race to win the Tory crown, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Mel Stride and Priti Patel have all called on Ms Reeves to abandon what they have called her “callous attack” on pensioners.

As an aside, is it wrong to admit that faces can only be put to half of the names in this particular race?

Labour’s plan to scrap winter fuel payments will impact an estimated 10 million pensioners, saving the Treasury £1.4billion this financial year.

As she keeps claiming, Ms Reeves has a £22billion black hole in the public finances to fill. It’s not an enviable inheritance, but that doesn’t mean she should be raiding pensioners’ pockets.

Especially now, with energy regulator Ofgem’s price cap announcement on Friday that domestic energy prices will rise in the run-up to winter…

Sarah Todd is a former magazine editor and writer who specialises in country life.