It isn’t the first time that ministers have suggested wealthy pensioners might want to hand their universal benefits over to those who really need it, but Iain Duncan Smith’s proposal in today’s Sunday Telegraph that those who don’t need their winter fuel allowances, bus passes or TV licences could hand them back voluntarily has an interesting political context.
Tomorrow is the deadline for bids for the next Spending Review, and though ministers across the Coalition have argued that the government must look again at universal benefits for pensioners in order to be fair, David Cameron has stood his ground. But Duncan Smith is highlighting the current ridiculous situation where departments are having to make deep cuts while trying not to think about unnecessary spending on benefits for people who don’t need them. His suggestion itself is a little bizarre: as Ken Clarke pointed out a few minutes ago on Murnaghan, there isn’t a mechanism for pensioners to hand back these perks, and it is more likely that public-spirited recipients would donate their winter fuel allowance to charity than write a cheque to the Treasury. But it’s unlikely that the timing of his comments as the spending review bids land on George Osborne’s desk is a coincidence.
Worryingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sunday Telegraph story suggests that the Prime Minister wants to at least avoid the issue in the party’s 2015 manifesto. If he tries this, he won’t avoid the question, though, and don’t forget that his 2010 ‘read my lips’ pledge only came when the Prime Minister was bumped into it by aggressive Labour campaigning.
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