Sir Keir Starmer rules out U-turn on winter fuel payment cut

On Friday, the re-elected Labour Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones, hit out at the Prime Minister and urged him to listen to voters, specifically citing the winter fuel payment cuts.

“I think the people, the working man and woman and businesses want the national government to listen and listen to them properly, and take this great country forward,” she said.

“What I’m saying to Keir is this, he needs to listen and take action - but also remember they’ve been in government a short length of time.”

Downing Street confirmed “there will not be a change to the Government’s policy” despite the concerns raised by Ms Jones, Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan and other senior Labour figures about the removal of the annual payments.

The Prime Minister’s press secretary said the Government will not be “blown off course” after the local election results.

He said: “We were elected as a stable and serious party after 14 years of chaos and decline.”

Asked about Ms Jones’ comments by The Yorkshire Post, Sir Keir’s press secretary said: “We won’t agree on everything, but we are aligned in our mission to deliver security and renewal for working people.”

The Guardian reported that, while a full restoration of the universal winter fuel payment was unlikely, the Government was considering whether to increase the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.

But such a move has been rejected by Downing Street, partly because the payment is now aligned with eligibility for pension credit and widening access to that would wipe out any savings from the policy.

The decision last July to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners was intended to save around £1.5 billion a year, with more than nine million people who would have previously been eligible losing out.

Wes Streeting told BBC Breakfast: “I know that people aren’t happy about winter fuel allowance, in lots of cases.

“We did protect it for the poorest pensioners but there are lots of people saying they disagree with it regardless.”

The Health Secretary defended the decision and other “unpopular” measures such as the hike in employers’ national insurance contributions, arguing they were necessary to raise cash to address the various “crises” across public services including the NHS and prisons.

In response to the electoral backlash, he told LBC: “We have to take that on the chin, and we are.

“In Government, we’re genuinely impatient for change. We are going hard at the challenges that the public has set for us.

“And we’re under no illusion – and I think the voters have sent us a fundamental message, ‘we voted for change with Labour last year, if you don’t deliver change, if we’re not feeling it, we’ll vote for change elsewhere’. So we’ve got that message loud and clear.”