YP Comment: Duty of care to elderly over heating bills

Asked by Mr Jarvis, who is languishing on Labour’s backbenches due, in part, to irreconcilable policy differences with Jeremy Corbyn, to respond to figures which showed that 43,000 OAPs died last winter because of the cold, Mr Cameron made this candid observation: “They are a strong rebuke to all governments about what more needs to be done.”

Mr Cameron is right. Even though the Government has protected pensions and maintained various initiatives to help all senior citizens, irrespective of their income and wealth, to heat their homes, many will concur with Mr Jarvis’s sentiments about fuel poverty – and the country’s duty of care to the elderly – when the profits of the “big six” energy suppliers border on the indefensible.

Yet, while the ponderous Competition Commission’s inquiry might, in time, lead to the reform of anti-competitive pricing practices and those instances when cuts in wholesale prices are not passed on to customers in full, this must not preclude the Prime Minister – and others – from looking at other ways to help those pensioners in the invidious position of having to decide whether to “eat or heat” during this cold snap. For some, it could be a matter 
of life or death.

That’s why the Government should commit itself – and the energy industry – to a major programme to improve the insulation of homes occupied by those pensioners deemed to be at most risk of hypothermia.

Not only does the country owe it to enable these individuals, often too proud to ask for help, to live with dignity during their latter years, but it will help shift this debate onto the issue of energy efficiency so gas and electricity is not wasted in such vast quantities. Let’s hope Mr Cameron, who describes himself as a compassionate Conservative, puts his words into action – perhaps he could ask Mr Jarvis to head a cross-party initiative before even more senior citizens shiver to death.

Stuck in the past: Labour’s poverty of ambition

another WEEK – and another below-par performance by Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions which will do little to silence those who believe Labour are heading for electoral oblivion under his leadership.

Even though Mr Corbyn is a man of humanity – and secured a divisive mandate from party activists – his omnishambles of a reshuffle, and a distinct lack of credible and authoritative leadership, is proving deeply damaging to politics per se, not least because it is fuelling policy complacency on the Tory benches.

Instead of pressing David Cameron on junior doctors, presumably because this would expose the extent of Labour’s relationship with the trade unions, Mr Corbyn’s narrow set of questions on social housing saw the Prime Minister successfully portray the Opposition as being anti-aspiration.

It was a valid criticism. For, while the Labour leader had every right to speak out on behalf of tenants living on sink estates, Corbynomics – the new politics of envy – should not stand in the way of young families acquiring their own home through various “right-to-buy” initiatives. As Mr Cameron said to cheers from his MPs, and stony silence from opponents, the political dividing line could not be clearer – one party, the Tories, which want to give people life chances and a Labour opposition that appears content for families to remain in poverty.

A hero to the end: Show of strength by military family

THE poignancy could not have been more palpable as dozens of wellwishers paid their last respects to Harry Thrush, a modest World War Two veteran who devoted his final years to supporting the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by attending their funerals in recognition of their sacrifice.

As befitted an extraordinary individual whose 90th birthday was marked in 2014 by troops sending a message of thanks from Camp Bastion, his coffin was draped in the Union flag and The Last Post sounded as the funeral in Leeds drew to a close. Yet, given the number of service personnel and strangers who accepted an invitation to attend, it not only showed the strength and tightness of the military family, but also the enduring importance of honouring those who went to war to defend hard-won liberties.