Chancellor makes 'mistake' with Winter Fuel Payment - but she has chance to make corrections
Rachel Reeves has announced plans to means test the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners - but with many elderly people set to miss out while still on lower incomes, it could cause headaches for the government when MPs return to parliament...
Impetuosity and inexperience lie behind the troublesome winter fuel announcement - for which no properly argued explanation, beyond regret, was offered.
Reeves appeared to have caved meekly to the Treasury's traditional bean-counting smallness, which often looks better on the spreadsheet than in the real world.
It looks more like a stitch-up rather than something which looks better on the spreadsheet than the real world. It won't have looked good on a spreadsheet, as the money saved is insignificant. As this piece points out, it may end up costing money if significantly more pensioners take up pension credit.
Not that the bean-counting smallness isn't there, but this debacle looks far more like a deliberate reminder of who manages these things, a reminder that it isn't Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer.
It wasn't impetuosity and inexperience by Reeves and Starmer either, it was gullibility. Or maybe it was innumeracy. The numbers were bound to have shouted a clear political warning - "don't do it, it isn't worth it - sack those who suggested it."
3 comments:
Perhaps the Labour government should commit to building the world's largest sofa? Hoping to find lots of loose change down the back of course.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey calls it "the first big mistake this government has made".
They have to warm up somehow. These things need practice.
DJ - they may simply raid the sofas of pensioners by appointing teams of Sofa Retrieval Officers the scour the back of each one. Unionised teams of course.
Sam - I bet some older Labour MPs are already realising it's harder than they thought and not as much fun as opposition.
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