Rachel Reeves is right to means test the winter fuel allowance - most OAPs don't need it: Yorkshire Post Letters

The media, including The Yorkshire Post, are full of criticism of the Chancellor's decision to apply a means test to the payment of the winter fuel allowance. They are wrong.

The fuel top-up for pensioners was a Tory policy designed to keep the pensioners' votes. Millions of pensioners are very well-off indeed so where was the sense, or the social justice, in bunging them an unneeded subsidy?

I'll be of pension age next year and I would not feel justified in receiving money above my state pension to help me pay for winter fuel. I'm not what most people would call wealthy but I don't need the top-up.

Means-testing of some benefits can sometimes be a rational policy, particularly if the testing of the means is straightforward and unintrusive; in this case no extra means test is needed because it has already been done, in effect, by the pension credit decision-making process. I support the Chancellor's decision.

Richard Godley, Meadowfields, Whitby.

May I just say how much I appreciated Saturday’s Yorkshire Post front page story and extended Postscript on the winter fuel allowance situation.

Now we already know that Centrica, who own British Gas (who sell that gas to us via the gas utility companies) have made £997 million profit for the first six months of this year – just short of a £1bn.

City analysts say of the firm “Centrica’s balance sheet continues to look attractive to us,” analysts noted, highlighting a strong net cash position expected to exceed £2 billion in the coming years. Centrica are also continuing share buy-backs they have so much spare cash.

Knowing this full well, Jonathan Brierley, Ofgem’s CEO, has authorised a 10 per cent hike in the fuel cap. He does not give a reason for this – unless he feels that £2bn is not enough for Centrica?

Ofgem has about 1,500 employees, which makes this reader a little bit suspicious of what they all do for the money they earn. My cynical reasoning tells me that the backs of a few fag packets would suffice for a simple P&L calculation, but their total salary and pension bill is over £110 million a year.

Talk about a gravy train – this must be one of the best to climb aboard on. Unless you’re an Old Age Pensioner that is…

William Loneskie, Lauder, Berwickshire.

Many economic experts predict that Labour will introduce more and harsher taxes this coming budget on October 30. Already Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has briefed that inheritance tax and capital gains tax are likely to rise. We have already seen how brutal this woman and her Prime Minister Keir Starmer can be by abolishing winter fuel payment just before the energy price cap was raised. But it would appear that they have a much bigger tax target in their sights - the UK housing market which is worth about £9 trillion. This could go beyond the infamous "mansion tax" and would in fact levy a tax on every homeowner in Britain. It would , of course, vary according to the property's value, or size of garden - in the interest of what Labour calls "fairness" - and most likely be set modestly to start with but then become an ever increasing revenue scheme once established.