A Tale Of Two Pensioners - Reeves' 'Financial Apartheid'
There are two pensioners. One is slightly more well-off – she can claim Pension Credit and so get her £200 Winter Fuel Payment this year.
The other is poorer, by more than £700 a month – he can’t claim either one…
Lucy is 69 and has £2,800 in savings. She gets a monthly income of £1,630.14 including a tiny private pension of £12.30, plus her rent fully paid – on top of which she can claim £301.52 a month in Pension Credit.
Edwin is 70 and has no savings. He gets a monthly income of £884.80 and has no private pension, out of which he has to contribute £70 towards his rent because Housing Benefit does not cover the full amount – he can’t claim a penny in Pension Credit.
These are real people I know personally, and have been through the government’s online pension credit calculator in detail for both of them. There could be millions more in Edwin's position.
These are the results:
This had to be wrong – any sentient human being could see that aside from being inhuman, it simply doesn’t make sense! Why on earth would a worse-off pensioner be denied money that a better-off pensioner can get?
I checked it again – and a third time - and got the same results.
It isn’t wrong.
Not only are Reeves and Starmer planning to take much-needed money from pensioners, but they are also operating what anyone can see is a kind of ‘financial apartheid’, whereby the poorer they are, the less they get.
(Mind you, they seem to like apartheid)
During my calculations for Edwin and Lucy, I also checked, again on the government’s own Pension Credit Calculator what the result would be if Edwin were to be getting Attendance Allowance, which he certainly needs – his GP has written saying he should be eligible.
A mini-stroke last year has affected his memory, he has to take daily statins, blood thinners, and medication for high cholesterol. He cannot walk far safely and has had 3 falls in the last year. He often forgets to take his medication amongst many other things, and needs help shopping and managing bills or his household budget – such as it is.
He is not capable of filling in the 30-page Attendance Allowance claim form alone (or indeed the 24-page Pension Credit form!). He doesn’t get PIP – pensioners can’t claim it.
If Edwin did receive the lower rate of Attendance Allowance, which is currently £68.10 per week, it would raise his monthly income by £272.40.
Re-doing the Pension Credit calculation with this included produced a very different result. If Edwin got £272.40 a month more, he would be eligible to claim £78.45 a week in Pension Credit – an extra £313.80 a month.
Which would then entitle him to the £200 Winter Fuel Payment.
If he had more money coming in, he would get this extra help to pay his rising heating costs this winter - already predicted to see colder-than-average temperatures, particularly during the core winter months of December to February. Because he hasn't, he won't.
Just incidentally, this is Rachel Reeves’ monthly income in comparison with Edwin’s; she, of course, gets a free house with all bills paid – two free houses, if you count her 21-roomed, eight-bedroomed country mansion Dorneywood…
Unsurprisingly, there has been a massive backlash against the planned cuts from unions, charities, genuine socialist MPs, and of course struggling pensioners and their loved ones.
Reeves’ skinflint scheme to freeze millions of the poorest pensioners in our society, will, it is claimed, at best save £1.4 billion. This is less than half the £3 billion Starmer and Reeves have happily promised to send to Ukraine each and every year for “as long as it takes”.
There is money for bombs and bullets, it seems, but not for the pensioner, purple-fingered from the cold, who Rachel Reeves claimed she ‘would never forget’ just two years ago, on August 21, 2022 – when she wanted your vote.
Once she lied her way into Downing Street, of course, she 'forgot'…
Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who one might think would be concerned with the health of pensioners is, according to his recent TV round, ‘not remotely happy’ about the cuts. He’s not remotely sad enough to oppose them, though.
Nor is Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall – who incidentally claimed £3,046.61 from the public purse last year to pay her bills. Claimed it from those very pensioners she will allow to freeze this winter.
Or Dame Diana Johnson MP, who was swiftly slapped down after hinting this morning that the Treasury might be considering less brutal plans – Dame Di claimed £1,442.67 from taxpayers last year for her bills. Pensioners in her Hull constituency weren’t so lucky.
There is to be a vote in the Commons tomorrow on Reeves’ disgraceful pensioner-plundering plans – according to current reports in the UK media, ‘up to 50 ‘Labour’ MPs could rebel over the cut to winter fuel payments’.
Only 50? And ‘could’ rebel?
Not that they’re planning to vote against the plan, mind you. Oh deary me no – they’re ‘considering abstaining’ – either attending the Commons but not voting or staying cosy and warm at home in their taxpayer-funded homes while they fail to vote against freezing their elderly constituents this coming winter.
And next winter – for the pensioners that survive this winter without dying from hypothermia…
NB: Names of both pensioners have been changed to protect their anonymity)
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