Pensioners in poverty WILL suffer from the winter fuel allowance loss
Here are the facts of how pensioners in poverty will suffer from the winter fuel allowance loss, courtesy of Age UK and Westminster Confidential:
The government’s refusal to publish a proper impact study of exactly who will be the worst off from the abolition of the winter fuel allowance for 10.8 million pensioners was one of the worst acts of this new Labour government.
Not only was it bad government not to provide the facts on such a big change for so many people but it looks like a deliberate act to conceal the damage ministers knew it would have on vulnerable people.
So it is good news today that a major charity, Age UK, has attempted to fill the gap and provide what the government refuses to do.
Once again women, especially those living alone, the disabled, and the very elderly are most at risk. Elderly women are becoming the favourite target of both Tory and Labour administrations- first they raised the pension age without properly informing women – so 3.6 million 50s born women expecting a pension at 60 had to wait another six years to get one. Then they fiddled figures so people on the old pension would not properly inherit their husband’s pensions. And to add insult to injury the Department for Work and Pensions made huge errors in pension payments to women and is taking ages to pay out what they have lost.
The figures from Age UK research show pensioners living below or just above the poverty line, some 82%, or four in every five, will lose the Winter Fuel Allowance as a result of the Government’s decision, including 80% in this group who are aged over 80 and 78% who are disabled.
The Age UK Report say10.7m UK pensioners will lose their WFP of whom almost one in four (23%) live in poverty or just above the poverty line. Age UK take poverty to mean living 50 per cent below the median income and just above poverty to be 60 per cent of the same figure.
1.4 million are women; 1.1 million are disabled ,800,000 are over 80 and one million live alone.- all factors that could affect their health and well being if they cannot keep warm this winter.
So now you know. There’s a logic in keeping it from us, as Labour has done – but only if you accept that the reasoning behind this policy is to harm the vulnerable.
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aktion T4 rolling along with out much of a ado