{"id":133466,"date":"2024-09-13T01:41:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T01:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/13\/no-assessment-on-impact-of-winter-fuel-payment-cut-keir-starmer\/"},"modified":"2024-09-13T01:41:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T01:41:32","slug":"no-assessment-on-impact-of-winter-fuel-payment-cut-keir-starmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/13\/no-assessment-on-impact-of-winter-fuel-payment-cut-keir-starmer\/","title":{"rendered":"No assessment on impact of winter fuel payment cut – Keir Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"No<\/div>


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The government did not carry out an impact assessment on cutting winter fuel support for millions of pensioners in England and Wales, the prime minister has said.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer said he had not been shown any analysis privately about the possible consequences of his decision to take away the payment from older people who do not receive pension credit.<\/p>\n

His comments came after the Conservatives called for any impact assessment to be published.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir said: \u201cThere isn\u2019t a report on my desk which somehow we\u2019re not showing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to reporters during a flight to the US, the prime minister added: \u201cI know you think there\u2019s a report on my desk but there isn\u2019t one.”<\/p>\n

He said it was not legally necessary for an official assessment of the plan to be done in advance.<\/p>\n

Speaking earlier, a Downing Street spokesman had said: \u201cThere are clear rules on this that we followed carefully.”<\/p>\n

No 10 pointed to the fact the mechanism the government chose to make this change, known as a statutory instrument, only requires an impact assessment if the cost of the legislation is greater than \u00a310m \u2013 which it is not in this case.<\/p>\n

At Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday, Conservative leader Rishi Sunak demanded<\/a> the government publish its impact assessment of the measure and accused Sir Keir of “hiding” the analysis.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Thursday, Sir Keir said the decision to remove winter fuel payments, worth up to \u00a3300 a year, from millions of pensioners was necessary to stabilise the economy, and that the government was putting “mitigations” in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact will be mitigated by pension credit, by the housing benefit,\u201d the prime minister continued. <\/p>\n

The government has encouraged pensioners to check if they qualify for pension credit \u2013 and if so, to apply for it, as this would mean they would keep getting the winter fuel payment too.<\/p>\n

Analysis by the House of Commons Library says<\/a> that 10.8 million pensioners in England and Wales received the winter fuel payment last winter. This coming winter, 1.5 million will receive the payment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government did not carry out an impact assessment on cutting winter fuel support for millions of pensioners in England and Wales, the prime minister has said. Sir Keir Starmer said he had not been shown any analysis privately about the possible consequences of his decision to take away the payment from older people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/4e3a\/live\/a12e30a0-7161-11ef-9516-9bafea49f39b.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[10982,3177,2363,6032,3959,8675,3960,2802],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133468,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133466\/revisions\/133468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}