Wes Streeting has backed Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to cut winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners despite the policy contributing to a disastrous set of local election results for Labour.
The health secretary stood by the prime minister’s cuts, arguing that the money saved has been invested in the NHS and improving Britain’s state schools.
He said Labour has “had to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the country out of the hole it was left in”. And, accusing the Conservatives of leaving the NHS in chaos, prisons crumbling and a lack of police on the streets, he said that “even if people disagree with some of the individual decisions we have taken, I don’t think anyone would disagree that we are dealing with a lot”.
Labour’s decision to means test the payment, which affected around 10 million pensioners, was seen as one of the biggest factors in a bruising set of local elections which saw it lose one of its safest parliamentary seats as well as 187 councillors.
More of the public are aware of the change than any of Labour’s other policies, while around two-thirds of voters dislike the policy.
More in Common director Luke Tryl has described it as Labour’s “original sin” and said it had a major impact on the party’s disastrous performance last week.
And on Monday the director of the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank warned Sir Keir has become “known around the world” for the winter fuel cuts.
Paul Johnson told Times Radio: “I was talking to the head of an international insurance company recently who said that the one thing everyone around the world knows about this government is that it’s taking money away from helping the cost of fuel for pensioners.
“So it’s one of those things which actually from a sort of fiscal point of view is pretty small but has turned out, I think, to be much bigger from a political and reputational point of view than the government expected.”
Downing Street is reportedly rethinking the cuts amid fears it could cost Labour the next general election, with officials considering raising the threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.
“The winter fuel cut has become totemic and talks to us being on the wrong side of working people. We need to show that’s not the case,” a Downing Street source told the Guardian.
It comes after a slew of Labour backbenchers publicly called for a reversal of the cuts as the local election results came in on Friday.
Asked whether Labour was considering a U-turn, Mr Streeting told Sky News: “I wouldn’t be close to those sorts of discussions.
“But what I want to reassure people is that, in terms of last Thursday’s results, we have noticed and we have got the message.
“What voters are telling us is that, unless they see the change that was promised delivered, unless they feel the change in their lives, they will look for change elsewhere.
“That is why the prime minister is pushing all of us in government to go further and faster delivering the results the country want.”
Cuts to winter fuel payments, announced by Rachel Reeves weeks after Labour came to power in July, are expected to save the government around £1.5bn, but will push more than 100,000 pensioners into poverty.
After the local elections, one of Labour’s re-elected mayors hit out at Sir Keir over the winter fuel cuts, while a group of left-wing MPs demanded a change of course from the PM.
Ros Jones, who was narrowly re-elected as mayor of Doncaster, beating the Reform candidate by just under 700 votes, told the BBC: “I wrote as soon as the winter fuel allowance was actually mooted, and I said it was wrong, and therefore I stepped in immediately and used our household support fund to ensure no-one in Doncaster went cold during the winter.”
Left-wing Labour MP Kim Johnson was among a group of backbenchers warning that Sir Keir’s current approach is leaving the door open to Reform UK and the far right.
“Voters want change – and if we don’t offer it with bold, hopeful policies that rebuild trust, the far right will,” she wrote on X.
Sir Keir has also defended the “tough decisions” he has taken in power, including winter fuel cuts, arguing that Labour “inherited a broken economy”.
He added: “Maybe other prime ministers would have walked past that, pretended it wasn’t there … I took the choice to make sure our economy was stable.”
Source: independent.co.uk
