Pensioners at risk
Sir: Douglas Murray wonders what would have happened if a Conservative chancellor had announced the removal of the winter fuel payment (‘Labour’s age of miracles’, 31 August) and speculates about the reaction. No such speculation is needed: the Conservative manifesto of 2017 stated that it would means test this benefit, as Labour is now doing.
The Labour party’s reaction was to publish research stating that up to 4,000 pensioners’ lives would be at risk and add that ‘pensioners in our country will struggle to heat their homes’ (the then shadow chancellor John McDonnell, as widely quoted in the press). No journalist has yet put this to the government. Does the government agree with its party’s research then, and if not, how is it different now? Will pensioners struggle to heat their homes?
Similarly, the Conservative 2017 manifesto pledge to change social care arrangements was howled down as a ‘dementia tax’. The Labour proposal in the same fiscal statement as the one cutting the winter fuel payment did something similar. This has received even less attention than the fuel benefit. Perhaps Douglas would have done better to wonder at the non-reaction to this.
Trevor Pitman
Beckenham, Kent
Letby and statistics
Sir: I fear that Rory Sutherland has fallen for the myth that Lucy Letby was convicted because of ‘statistics’ (The Wiki Man, 31 August). Once it was established that someone was deliberately harming children on the ward – a fact that Letby herself conceded – it was highly relevant that she was the only person who was always present. Other evidence presented at the trial, such as her falsification of medical records, strengthened the case but none of this had anything to do with statistics.
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