The Winter Fuel Allowance is indefensible

Sally Chatterjee

Well said. This looks like another of Gordon Brown's gimmicks to bribe voters and make them feel dependent on the welfare state, where even the wealthy are fleeced with one hand whilst the other gives them money back. Time for this government to make amends for Labour's waste.

Rhoda Klapp

I get it, and it is indefensible as long as I have a job.

The thing about the younger generations is, what is necessary and sufficient to fix it is to fix the economy. And allow Britons to benefit from it, don't run it for multi-nationals who do not care about this country more than any other, or for lobbyists or pressure groups, or the EU or anybody else. Cheap energy might be a good start. Then you wouldn't need to give out einter fuel allowance.

Captain Christy

I use mine as my deposit for the annual pub trip to York races.

Boudicca

Perhaps Cameron could create a voluntary 'Pay back your winter fuel allowance' facility so that people, such as Seve Norris could return the money to the Treasury if they don't need it. If the returned money went into a ring-fenced fund it could be used to insulate elderly peoples' homes or perhaps be donated to a charity such as Help the Aged.

Mr Norris should really be ashamed of himself for keeping the money and pouring it down his neck.

James Barton

Means tested benefits are unfair and ensure that those who have not bothered to save for their retirement get given everything for free; whilst those who have gone without in an effort to save are punished.

Yosemite Sam

I declare an interest: I receive this allowance. I do not need it, but it arrives in my account (and my wifes) with annual regularity. It is a perfect example of a poorly targetted universal benefit. However, a promise was made to keep it - but no promise was made to keep it tax free. I suggest that it become taxable, at least it would reduce the cost without breaking the promise. By the same token, the decision to remove child benefit from those earning more than £40K should be replaced by a policy of taxing child benefit at all levels of income. All non taxable benefits should become taxable, this should not affect the poorest because the threshold is to be raised to £10K in this parliament.

Dearneraider

Means test the bus pass whilst you're at it . In some places the bus pass also entitles people to free travel on the Railways, so you have people between 60 and 65 who are in full time work paying good wages who are subsidised by the tax oayer to travel free on the trains.

Hexhamgeezer

If the enviroloons dont hamstring shale gas production we we could soon ditch the WFA.

DeeJay

My neighbour, who uses her Winter Fuel allowance judiciously, manages to make it stretch out over 12 months!

She claims to vote Labour and still enjoys the cut and thrust of the political debate. But, although she is certainly lucid, I am pretty sure she will not recall anything about 'Shagger' Norris or indeed the last LibDem candidate for London mayor.

Barry Bilge

Here we have a conundrum; people 60+ who don't need the allowance still get it versus the moral hazard of means tested benefits subsidising those who won't help themselves.(and the cost of administering that means testing)

Of course the best answer is not to weigh up the pros and cons of each position as if they are in competition with each other. They aren't. The problem is energy prices being driven higher and higher by crackpot answers to man made climate change such as wind turbines.

Lower energy prices would benefit young and old alike, would sidestep the issue of WFA going to expats, would be a shot in the arm of the productive part of the economy and wouldn't require going through the corrupt money washing machine that is Government.

Cynic

I get the winter fuel allowance and guess what? It goes towards buying my winter fuel - which has gone up 15% since last year, incidentally. I am officially in fuel poverty, but since I've got savings (devaluing faster every day thanks to QE2), I doubt I'd get the allowance if means testing were instituted. Surely we've had enough of penalising the prudent to reward the feckless and "couldn't be bothered" mob?

Augustus

Boudicca -
October 6th, 2011 6:48pm

Good point!

JustMe

My dad is a ex-miner so gets free coal.... and of course a free winter fuel allowance :)

Double yer money!

Dimoto

Howker says that Cameron has picked up on the worry that parents have for their children's prospects.

From there, he has jumped to the presumption that everything the government does must be targeted at freebees and favours for the "young".
Total non sequitur.

I regard the WFA as a small token gesture, to acknowledge the vast amount of money savers (overwhelmingly the senior citizens), have lost in the devaluation of their lifetime savings, to save the economy.
It is the seniors who have born the brunt of the financial crisis.

Howker has evidently been reading Willett's garbage about "theft between the generations".

We can't take it with us you know.

The "bank of mum and dad" keeps half of the "youth" of this country solvent.

The exchequer will tax the residue yet again in due course.

If the seniors had not earned well, and saved well, the country would be bankrupt.

"Youth" should stop feeling sorry for themselves, get their heads down and WORK, (at least as far as their criminally deficient education allows).

The globalised world has become much more competitive.
The structure of firms has become much flatter with a preponderance of lowly paid, dead-end jobs.

To blame these secular changes on "the greedy generation" is obtuse, daft and vindictive.

ButcombeMan

Th allowance and especially the way it is paid (which is grossly expensive & wasteful of civil service resources) is ridiculous and was certainly a part of Brown's plan to create a client state. The administration, especially set-up costs, are astonishing.

Yet fuel poverty is an increasing problem, particularly in the countryside where it is much colder than in towns and cities.

One simple solution to the winter fuel payment would be to consolidate it into the national old age pension & pay it in two tranches, one chunk at the end of October the other at the end of February.

This would be MUCH cheaper than the current method and it would be subject to income tax.

Mine goes to charity.

FordPrefect

I have paid so much in tax that I'm happy to receive it. A rebate on my tax contribution to Iraq and Afgan wars and the many other wasteful Govt programmes.

REPay

The disgraced and disgraceful vote grubber and money waster Brown was very clever in the ways in which he ingrained wasteful spending...in a way that costs a phenomenal amount to administer. I would like to see a supertax of 80% on all pensions funded by the state over the value of 60k!!

Occasional Ostrich

When my wife looks at it on her bank statement, it appears to come from the same pot as her pension. So she has alwas thought of it simply as deferred pension, for Xmas shopping.

xenophon

It doesn't work as a bribe for older voters once it's in place. It works as a constraint on government which dare not take it away for fear of the outrage that would ensue.

However, it appears http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Pensionsandretirementplanning/Benefits/BenefitsInRetirement/DG_198331 that the qualification age is being incremented gradually. I shall have to wait until I'm 62: and I don't know how I survived the last winter.

escapedRoger

£200 will buy me enough logs to heat a small house for 4 months, the temperature outside can often get down to -20C, nice and cosy when i've been out skiing and get back to a lovely log fire. The sterling rate against the KM (Bosnia Mark) has gone down 25% since the government helps it to slide and i will get less logs this year than last. Have to get the chainsaw out.

In2minds

"The Winter Fuel Allowance is indefensible" - Yes it is, but then so is the energy policy of the coalition.

Frank Sutton

Deejay writes: "My neighbour, who uses her Winter Fuel allowance judiciously, manages to make it stretch out over 12 months!"
Given that you can spend your winter fuel allowance as you please - it's a cash payment - I don't understand this.
Unless, of course, it's your neighbour's only source of income.
Equally, how does Steve Norris know that the £200 he spends on claret is the same £200 he gets as Winter fuel allowance?
Is he saying that his wine cellar would be a few cases short without it?

TomTom

So abolish the WFP and at the same time CUT fuel costs by 30% by having price regulation as in Germany and the USA. It is outrageous that German and French companies have laissez-faire in Britain but price controls in their home markets.

It gets significantly colder and darker the further North you go in Britain which is more northerly than most parts of the EU

Ian Walker

James Barton: "Means tested benefits are unfair"

That is true only if the testing is inaccurate. Otherwise they are eminently fair.

The rest of your post goes on to suggest that someone who worked a long life in an honest low-paid job should freeze to death because they didn't have the gumption to be a solicitor from Sussex.

Bill (Scotland)

Whilst I don't disagree with your analysis, I would point out that precisely the same analysis could be applied to Child Benefit, 'swathes of which' (to use your phrase) goes to well-off parents who really do not need it.

The latest bout of QE announced yesterday (complete madness of course, just like the earlier QE 3 years ago) is another kind of political bribe, which will keep interest rates low and benefit mortgage-holders, once more leaving savers high and dry - translated into the vernacular, Sir Mervyn King's comments about this amounted to 'suck it up'.

Frankly your attempt at a bit of unsubtle older-generation bashing is pretty unpleasant. My basic belief is that most benefits should go, universal and 'means tested' alike, with the government getting out of the way and allowing people to do their own thing. As for the bloated NHS I'd reduce it to at most a basic health clinic service. That would really focus people's attention.

What this whole economic crisis boils down to is that western countries (in this context includes north America, most of Europe and Japan) need to accept a drastic reduction in their living standards as their economies no longer produce the net income to justify their (i.e. our) comfortable lifestyles.

Governments in democracies cannot of course state that quite so bluntly to their electorates - so we have all these benefits paid out of [yet more] borrowed money and artificially-low interest rates to keep indebted voters complaisant in the madness.

Hard Heartless Perry

Thank you Dimoto and others of like sentiment.

Douglas Carter

Perhaps Mr. Cameron might win a wee bit of applause if he took the opportunity to slate the fool who put VAT on fuel fifteen years ago.

I'm certain he'd get full Cabinet backing.

Chris lancashire

Along with the 50p rate another of Brown's elephant traps. WFA is a complete joke and should be scrapped but there is no way Cameron can - remember "Thatcher, Milk Snatcher"? This would be the easiest of bricks for Labour to throw at Cameron.

Ways out? Either let it wither through inflation or scrap it and put the same amount on the State Pension - that way it will cease to apply from 60 and be subject to tax.

Brown has so much to answer for.

Occasional Ostrich

Chris lancashire 9:33am

"Wither through inflation"

Well, a lot of the payments made by this so-called 'welfare state' need to be allowed to wither. Trouble is, eventually they get to the stage that the cost of civil servants administering them becomes such a large part of the whole pot from which the payments are made that they have to be sacked (sorry - redeployed), at which point you may be sure that said 'civil' servants will protest in such a way as to make sure the issue gets maximum exposure. Whichever government dares to grasp the nettle is going to get badly stung. (that'll be a Conservative government, then; any other would lack the courage.)

Mycroft

It also means a great deal to many cash-strapped pensioners, and someone like Norris, who can afford to joke about it, perhaps does not full appreciate that; to remove it would send a most unfortunate signal, and Cameron is far too canny to do so.

toni

Boudicca. An excellent pay back plan and pour encourager les autres a list of these generous benefactors should be published in the national press.

John Norwich

Chris lancashire to me has the best answer in that it shoulbe incorporated into the state pension thereby becoming taxable to those who dont need it,to take it away from people who are surviving on some of the worst state pensions in Europe (to our enormous shame) this would be with the enormous rise in fuel prices tantamount to a choice of keeping warm or eating ,still as long as "cast iron Dave" can give away billions to assorted world despots and according to him ,dont mind ,i'm sure all will be well.
Fuel poverty is very real already,last year here in a rural area where oil is the main heating fuel ,we had an enormous price rise in the space of 2-3 weeks ,over 50% ,when i ordered mine ,and remember with oil you pay up front,the company i deal with told me that they had several people who after finding out the price could not afford to order thereby resorting to very expensive electric fires and immersion heaters whilst the boiler was off.

Ricky

The Miliband Bruvvers Grim along with Eddie Balls & Gordon Brown Stuff were entirely culpable in raising the costs of fuel and energy by not building nuclear powers stations and by buying into the tax hungry greedfest known as the AGW myth. The Winter Fuel Allowance covered this fraud up. Now Eddie wants us to believe he will go after the providers, following a decade of double VAT fuel.

Similarly, The National Socialist Workers Party also built no new prisons whilst in office and now bleat on about rising crime, despite cash for Honours and double flipping by certain former Ministerial role models.

National Socialists are the political Skinnerians who base their policies on a loathing of human beings, believing that people can be fined, bribed or paid to behave. Ratamorphics all.

E O Anthropus

No he shouldn't. What he should do is use a bit of thick sense, scrap every job-creating scheme benefit, credit or allowance paid to those who work, cut tax according and allow us to spend our money on what we want to spend it.

Boyders

Claret is a very sensible winter fuel and probably cheaper than oil.

TomTom

"From there, he has jumped to the presumption that everything the government does must be targeted at freebees and favours for the "young".
Total non sequitur."

Ed Howker is Co-Author of The Jilted Generation and feels the Old have cheated the Young. It is generational politics.....

Patricia

I've paid tax for 40 years and seen it go towards benefits for the children of "economic migrants" living in their homeland, housing allowance for other "economic migrants" and of course our own special brand of wasters who have never heard an alarm clock go off in their lives. My fuel allowance will go on some kinky boots (to keep my feet warm, of course).

alexsandr

roll it into means tested pension credit. That already has the meanstesting procedures, it would be a matter of changing the numbers.
That would stop it going to the wealthy elderly, and remove a whole set of administrators

Occasional Ostrich

alexsandr 11:39am

Fair enough, Alexsandr, I'll buy that.

WetherspoonThree

I should like to nominate Malcolm Wicks, Labour Croydon North, as the most useless minister since say..1945. His period as Energy Minister seems to have been catastrophic for both the consumer and the industry.
I regret to say the coalition do not appear to have made many improvements since the last election and I am left wondering whether nationalization is the only sensible answer. (I never thought I would be advocating public ownership but clearly, Ofgem is unfit for purpose and the government seems paralysed where energy supply is concerned).
So until these matters have been resolved and this country has cogent energy policy its seems churlish to debate the merits or otherwise of the Winter Fuel Allowance.

In2minds

"The Winter Fuel Allowance is indefensible" - Just like the coalitions energy policy!

Jimminy Wicket

I would agree Steve Norris does not need the winter fuel allowance just as he probably does not need his bus pass, but does that mean that the majority of elderly whose income is just above the means tested level should go without?

Bear in mind the elderly are suffering the hardest during this downturn, their pensions swallowed up by rising cost, and their hard earned lifetime savings dwindling due to low interest rates and not a hope of replenishing them.

Steve Norris probably has no need to keep the temperature of his home as high as the aged and infirm does, nor would he be placed in the position of a choice between heating and eating, most that make that choice are not always eligible for benefits. It is a true old saying the selfish half of this Country does not know or want to know how the other half live.

DeeJay

Dear Frank @ 12.50am
I suspect my neighbour is on the higher rate for her Winter Fuel Allowance(now reduced to £300) and that she doesn't fiddle with the thermostat until she notices a significant amount of ice on the inside of her windows.
Older readers will be familiar with this phenomenon and the desire to live frugally and not to squander our resources.

rosemary leader

There are many people who just fall short of getting pension credit who rely on the fuel allowance to enable them to heat their houses. This is real need and the person who boasted they spent theirs on claret ought to be ashamed. It would have been far more dignified if they had said as they did not need it that they had donated it to a childrens hospice or similar. Perhaps they would like to reflect on this.

Graham Wilkins

I'm going to spend mine on logs for my wood burning stove and for paying the gas bill. What else?

Sunny Ex-pat

I'll probably spend mine sitting in the Spanish sun drinking beer at the beach bar.

Richard Withering

I was toying with the idea of spending my £200 on some viagra and a high class escort.