Everyone should have a warm, safe place to call home – but heating a Surrey Hills mansion isn’t cheap. The drawing room alone takes an age to warm. Then there’s the Aga. And the sauna. So snatching £200-300 from the trembling hands of pensioners might be a bit cold. Now the all-inclusive cruise might have to wait until the spring. 

Newsflash: The Winter Fuel Payment cut is being reversed! Well, in part at least. But a blanket payment to all the elderly was never the answer. Of course, some people need, and definitely should be given the money to warm their homes, but it’s not just pensioners shivering under their covers. In fact, chances are it’s not. 

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows the average household wealth was 33 times higher with someone aged 65 to 74 heading it compared to the 16 to 24 age group. In fairness, there is a slight decline once you hit 75, but when the median household wealth tops half a million in the 65 to 74 age range, a couple of hundred quid is hardly going to send most pensioners into financial freefall.  

Introduced in 1997, this automatic handout was reduced to those receiving qualifying, means-tested benefits last winter. The uproar from those that could probably spend the winter in their second – or third – holiday home would make you think they were reliving the Winter of Discontent. And what’s worse, those living in most European countries could, and still can if they qualify, actually claim this payment to heat a home they’re not even using. It’s probably being rented to a work shy millennial to be fair. And as this older age group keeps reminding us, sharing is caring. 

It’s safe to say that taking this payment away from 9.3 million people went down like a cup of cold sick. Not even an Aga could warm that one up. Even Martin Lewis, patron saint of financial sanity, wasn’t massively impressed. “Many pensioners eke out the £100 to £300 Winter Fuel Payments to allow them to keep some heating on through the cold months,” he says. “While there’s an argument for ending its universality due to tight national finances, it’s being squeezed to too narrow a group.”

And he’s not wrong. The Department for Work and Pensions estimated that in 2022-23, up to 760,000 households were not claiming the means-tested benefits they are entitled to, meaning they will now miss out on the Winter Fuel Payment too.

I don’t hate actually hate your gran – depriving people in need is wrong. Martin Lewis says: “The Government has a huge moral imperative to ensure the people eligible for Pension Credit who don’t get it are informed, educated and helped through the process. It is planning an awareness-raising campaign, but it needs to ensure that it reaches every corner.”

So when Starmer eventually gives more clarity on this partial reversal, the public purse shouldn’t be emptied to fund another pensioner’s Range Rover. Even Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said millionaires shouldn’t get this payment again. Lib Dem leader and Surrey loyalist Ed Davey backs a full reversal though, predictably. 

Of course it’s tragic that pensioners, or anyone for that matter, might be forced to choose between heating or eating. That’s hardly breaking news. But the idea of the p*iss poor pensioner doesn’t match the reality. With the cost of living hitting everyone, funding should be driven by need, not nostalgia.