Two days after Labour MPs stood in line to strip millions of poor pensioners of their winter fuel payments and BBC Breakfast was beaming weasely Wes Streeting’s smug mug onto people’s television screens to confirm just how little the new government give a shit that its cruel policy will kill people this winter.
Streeting took the idiom “out of sight, out of mind” to staggering new heights when he admitted the government hasn’t even done an impact assessment on its controversial cut. In other words, it means the new Labour government has conducted no evaluation to determine who the policy will impact, and how much harm it will do.
Winter fuel payments: no impact assessment
Health secretary Wes Streeting was doing the media rounds on Thursday 12 September.
On BBC Breakfast he confirmed that the Labour government hasn’t evaluated the potential impact of its move to scrap the winter fuel payments for a majority of pensioners:
BREAKING
Wes Streeting has confirmed that Labour didn’t carry out any impact assessment before cutting the pensioner’s winter fuel payment. He also signalled other groups face similar cuts. pic.twitter.com/hBE1IvfZ88
— MSM Monitor (@msm_monitor) September 12, 2024
Little wonder that Starmer was refusing to release one at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) then. There quite literally isn’t one.
Essentially, the government could have run a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) for its policy. This would have looked at the impact of means testing the winter fuel payments to pensioners. Notably, it would have assessed how it would have affected different groups.
What’s more, it might have detailed the alternatives the government had considered. Effectively, it would set out justification for slashing the winter fuel payment compared to other policy decisions it could have taken to make its savings.
Unsurprisingly, Streeting’s admission confirmed the government hasn’t bothered to do this. Wily NHS privatisation wonk Wes obviously knows a thing or two about wriggling out of scrutiny. Therefore he was the perfect Starmerite stooge to declare it with a straight face, and unredeeming lack of humanity.
Instead then, in a separate interview with Sky News, he put these evasion skills into practice and said that:
there’ll be an impact assessment that takes into account the cumulative decisions the chancellor makes.
Of course, this would be the “cumulative decisions” retiree-robber Rachel Reeves says means by 2029, pensioners would still be better off under Labour than they would have under the Tories. Naturally, the pensions triple-lock is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this bold claim.
Some savings far off in the next 5 years will of course mean nothing to pensioners struggling to pay their bills THIS winter.
Labour winter fuel payments cut will kill thousands
If the government had done an impact assessment, it might have reaffirmed what it learnt in an analysis from 2017. That is, one Labour itself previously did:
In 2017 Labour did analysis that showed up to 4,000 pensioners could die if winter fuel payments were cut.
This morning Wes Streeting confirmed the Labour govt havn’t done an impact assessment on the effect of scrapping the universal winter fuel allowance pic.twitter.com/uPwPiD9emL
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) September 12, 2024
Or, the reality might actually have been even worse – as separate studies have shown in the past:
A 12,000 estimate is based on the 50% figure from the new research and the average annual number of excess winter deaths of people aged 65+ in England and Wales since 2000/1, taken from Excess Winter Mortality statistics, Office for National Statistics https://t.co/yp4pXLLRXH pic.twitter.com/G3kOd8edOa
— ℹ️ Not The Torygraph 💚 #SaveOurNHS #ScrapNHSBill (@TweetForTheMany) September 12, 2024
Charity Age UK has calculated that Labour’s move will impact 800,000 older people on very low incomes. Specifically, this is those living on less than £218.25 a week as single pensioners, or £332.95 as couples.
And despite the government’s drive to increase uptake in Pension Credit – the benefit that automatically entitles pensioners to the winter fuel payments – the majority will still miss out this winter.
On top of this, Age UK estimated that around a million more pensioners less than £50 above the so-called poverty line will be “hit hard” by the Labour removing the benefit payment.
However, as the Canary previously reported, it’s likely a lot worse than this.
Despite all these warnings, the Labour government has actively chosen to ignore the impact of its policy entirely – by not doing an assessment.
Evading scrutiny and blame
Ultimately, it seems the new government has recognised the fact that where there’s an impact assessment, there’s a way. Specifically, that is, a way to hold the party in power to account. So, instead, it hasn’t bothered to do one for winter fuel payments.
If there’s no impact assessment, it can claim the countless deaths its callous cut will cause this winter were unforeseeable. That isn’t true, but by the time the full effects of its policy are known, for thousands it will already be too late. One way or another, Labour will blame the Tories. Only, it’ll be the red continuity Conservatives in government who were really responsible.
At the end of the day, the government has chosen not to do this evaluation, because it knows exactly what it will show.
Feature image via X – MSM Monitor
