I am hugely relieved to be getting my winter fuel payment back. I don’t know how I managed without it, or rather I wouldn’t know how I managed without it if I had noticed its absence in the first place. Welcome to Britain, a country where bad policies make good politics.
Winter fuel payments exist for one reason and one only. The UK state pension is absurdly low, one of the lowest in Europe, and for people who have, for whatever reason, not set aside enough to enjoy an occupational pension, it’s an essential part of their income.
It was introduced by the 1997 Labour government and has been sustained ever since, apart from the winter just passed when the latest Labour government thought it absurd that better off people should receive free government hand outs and to limit payments to the very poorest, which is to say those old folk claiming pension credits. Unfortunately, a lot of pensioners don’t claim pension credits, usually because they have never heard of it or don’t know how to, so removing the payment to them had a damaging effect.
What Labour should have done would have been to have taken a long, hard look at why winter fuel payments were needed in the first place and then come up with well thought through solutions. They didn’t and now we’re back to the previous system, apart from old codgers trousering over £35,000 a year. What a waste of time this was.
The state pension is currently just under £12,000 a year, whereas the UK average wage is over £37,000, so you can see the discrepancy. I am not suggesting that the state pension needs to be the same as the UK average wage, not least because pensioners don’t pay National Insurance or contribute to their pension when they are already pensioners, but I would suggest £12,000 probably doesn’t get you very far these days.
In a way, the winter fuel payment is a way of ignoring the reality of pensioner poverty. Not all pensioners are poor, obviously, because they are the group least likely to use food banks and while I am not exactly living the life of a millionaire I am doing all right. But even for me, the winter fuel payment will come in handy.
I will be able to enjoy an extra case of decent quality wine this Christmas and perhaps there will be enough left over to invest in a bottle of single malt. Whereupon, I shall be able to say a big thank you to the Labour government for employing good politics over bad policies.
Things like winter fuel payments and free school meals are merely sticking plaster, covering an open wound of poverty that hangs over our green and not particularly pleasant land. Making us more equal costs money and those with a lot are not always keen to share it with those who have a little.
The thing about winter fuel payments is that they only go to us old farts. I see desperate people every week at our food bank who, you could argue, have less than nothing and they don’t get winter fuel payments or anything else. It seems not everyone thinks, nor perhaps even cares, about that because – and here’s the rub – many of these people don’t vote. Pensioners do vote and, disappointingly, they often vote for themselves and sod everyone else, even their children and grandchildren. But that’s a topic for another day.
Three cheers for the returning winter fuel payment. I’ll spend mine wisely and – don’t worry – I will donate far more to my charities of choice than I shall gain by way of government freebies. Ridiculous really though, isn’t it?
