The Labour Party is being urged to take note of its own warnings that thousands of pensioners could die if winter fuel payments were slashed.
Analysis published in 2017, when Sir Keir Starmer was in the Shadow Cabinet, warned that Conservative plans to cut the fuel allowance for ten million pensioners would increase excess deaths by 3,850 that winter.
The proposal, put forward by Theresa May’s government, was dubbed the “single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation in our country”.
The report has resurfaced just weeks after Rachel Reeves announced that older people not in receipt of pension credits or other means-tested benefits will no longer receive winter fuel payments from this year onwards.
The winter fuel payment is a payment of either £200 or £300 to help pensioners with their heating bills.
Around 10 million pensioners and seven million pensioner households are expected to be affected by the changes.
Taking to social media, Peter Stefanovic asked Starmer what has changed since his party first published its analysis in 2017, and if the answer is nothing, then “how can MPs properly debate this tomorrow?”
Watch his film in full below:
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