The Health department says there is a perfectly good explanation for a 29% rise in the number of excess winter deaths to 31,100 in 2012/13. It is pointing to research by Public Health England which linked the rise to a longer flu season and continuing cold weather late into the winter and early spring. But as Fraser argued in his Telegraph column earlier this year, there is still not nearly enough that is being done to combat excess winter deaths, whether or not this year’s 29% rise is a one-off.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman didn’t seem particularly keen to suggest that there was anything else, beyond NHS planning and public health spending, that should be done, when he responded to the figures today. He said:
‘[The government] has a range of things to support the vulnerable: the winter fuel payments, and cold weather payments. It was this government that has announced the higher level of cold weather payment. That’s just one of the things that we are doing in this area.’
Perhaps, though, it’s worth examining whether any of these things to support the vulnerable are really supporting the vulnerable in the best possible way. You can support the principle of protecting pensioners and the elderly through the benefits system while vehemently disagreeing with the way that money is handed out currently: not just to the vulnerable but to those who don’t need support. The vulnerable could, under a means-tested system, receive more money, or the government could, under an entirely new system, spend the winter fuel payment money as a chunk to insulate the homes of those who are currently spending that benefit to heat their properties to cold rather than freezing, which is still an unacceptable situation: the winter fuel payment shouldn’t escape out of the windows of leaky homes, nor is it justifiable for it to warm the bellies of those who can afford to use it buy fine wines at Christmas when ‘excess winter deaths’ are so high in this country.
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