Torsten Bell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I have already discussed with the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) the question of people just over the pension credit threshold. I recognise that issue and I have spoken to pensioners in that situation. As I say, we have listened, and that is why we have put in place a much higher threshold, which means that Chrissy, if she is near to the pension credit threshold, will be receiving winter fuel payments this year.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  It is usual for a Minister to thank the Member for their question, but I actually mean it in this case, because the right hon. Lady has completely proved my point that the Conservatives have learned no lessons whatever. They think they can come to this Chamber and call for more spending and oppose every tax rise—and they expect to be taken seriously ever again? They will not be.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I absolutely can. As I said, we need to provide the reassurance that the vast majority of pensioners will receive this support, and will not have to do anything to get the payment in their bank account.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  On 21 May, the Prime Minister told this House that the Government wanted to extend eligibility for winter fuel payments to a wider range of pensioners in England and Wales. Today we are setting out how this will happen for the coming winter and the years ahead. This will provide certainty for pensioners and ensure that payments can be made swiftly and automatically, which is our priority. I hope this statement will also answer many of the questions that hon. Members have raised with me and others in recent weeks. Let me set out for the House how this system will work. All pensioners with incomes up to and including £35,000 will benefit from support, as will all those on pension credit and other income-related benefits. The payment of £200 per household, or £300 per household where there is someone aged over 80, will be made to all pensioner households in England and Wales. Individual pensioners with taxable income above £35,000 will have any winter fuel payment automatically recovered via His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs without the need for them to take any action. This will be via PAYE for the majority, or in their self-assessment tax return for those who already complete one. No one will be brought into tax or into self-assessment just to repay their winter fuel payment. Those that prefer not to receive a payment can opt out of receiving it. As was previously the case before July 2024, where the household is not getting an income-related benefit and there is more than one pensioner in the household, shared payments split across the recipients will be made. This Government have had to make tough decisions. It is right to means-test the winter fuel payment— [ Interruption. ] I thought the Conservative party supported means-testing the winter fuel payment. We will find out in this debate shortly. We have had to make take tough decisions because of the disaster left by the Conservative party. It is right to means-test the winter fuel payment on grounds of fairness and fiscal sustainability. Most people accept that it makes no sense to pay hundreds of pounds to pensioners irrespective of their incomes. Those on the highest incomes do not need it, and there are many other calls on public spending. The Government have, however, listened to concerns about the level of the means test. We are acting to ensure that all lower-income pensioners receive support. The new individual £35,000 threshold is significantly above the income of pensioners in poverty, and broadly in line with average earnings. It will mean that the vast majority—over three quarters, or 9 million pensioners—will benefit from a winter fuel payment. This change ensures that the means-testing of winter fuel payments has no effect on pensioner poverty. Means-testing the winter fuel payment in England and Wales like this will save around £450 million a year, subject to certification by the Office for Budget Responsibility, compared with the system of universal payments. It will cost around £1.25 billion in England and Wales, compared with the position last winter. Decisions about the situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland remain for their devolved Administrations in the usual way. As the Prime Minister has previously set out, these are changes that will be fully funded at the next fiscal event, the autumn Budget. That will ensure that final costings and funding decisions come alongside the latest forecast from the OBR. We will ensure that the Government’s non-negotiable fiscal rules are met. We are setting out these changes before the summer to ensure that more pensioners receive support this winter. Regulations will be laid in the coming months to ensure that the payments are made, and tax changes will be legislated for in the Finance Bill. I want to spell out clearly today that pensioners do not need to do anything. Winter fuel payments will be paid automatically this winter to all pensioners who receive the state pension, pension credit or anyone who has previously received a winter fuel payment. Similarly, payments will be recovered automatically through the tax system for those with an income of over £35,000. Pensioners will also continue to receive wider support. Our pension credit take-up campaign has seen almost 60,000 awards made. I thank hon. Members on both sides of this House, local authorities and charities for their work on that campaign. Over 12 million pensioners right across the UK are also benefiting from the triple lock. The full new state pension is set to increase by up to £1,900 a year over this Parliament as a result. I commend that support for pensioners, and this statement, to the House.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  That is such an important point! One of the biggest mistakes that we made in previous decades was saying, “We will not see the benefits of work to improve the quality of the housing stock for years, so let us slash it.” That is exactly what happened in 2013, when there was a 90% cut in the level of insulations under the energy company obligation scheme, and we have paid the price for that ever since. This Government are not going to make the same mistake. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been ramping up the warm homes programme, and we need to be out there insulating homes and improving lofts every day until Britain has a housing stock of which it can be proud.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is completely right. As I say, we have set the threshold at a level that means that the vast majority of pensioners—not just in her constituency, but right across England and Wales—will receive support in the coming winter. Importantly, we are announcing the threshold now, to make sure those payments can be made in time for this winter.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  That is a very important point. Whatever the views expressed in the House today, I say to all Members that if any of them want to suggest ways in which we can continue to drive up pension credit and ensure that the poorest pensioners receive the support to which they are entitled, I will always be happy to talk to them.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for raising that point. It is important that those in need of healthcare, in particular, receive support. It is not that we see higher levels of challenge in keeping the heating on among older generations; it is about the consequences of that, particularly in cases such as the one she raises. That is exactly why we need to ensure that we are turning around the NHS, which all the constituents of hon. Members in England are relying on. We are seeing improvements to waiting times in Wales as well.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member is right to highlight that we need to provide support for older people, and for all households, with their energy bills right through the year, which is what this Government have been doing. We have not been waiting. As I said, the warm homes discount is being extended to almost 3 million extra households, we are rolling out the improvements to the insulation programmes that I have just mentioned, and the household support fund has been extended for future years. That is exactly what we need to do, while at the same time improving our energy security and our energy generation to make sure that, in future, we do not see the disaster of the last five years, when global wholesale gas prices sent electricity and gas prices here in the UK through the roof.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that he and others have been involved in in Hartlepool. Driving up the take-up of all benefits so that people get the support to which they are entitled is important for ensuring that more poor households are able to eat, to heat their homes and to live a decent life.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the issue of low take-up of pension credit and he refers to the figure of more than 700,000 pensioners, which unfortunately was true under the last Government. We have seen unprecedented levels of pension credit applications over the past year because of the campaign by the Government and by hon. Members from all parties. Those applications are very welcome, but I agree that we need to keep up the momentum. In the short-term, we are writing to all new housing benefits claimants who we think could be eligible for pension credit and encouraging them to apply; we are engaging in new research about what has worked in the drive for pension credit take-up, which largely seems to be awareness of the benefit; and we are looking at better data sharing with local authorities and across central Government Departments, including between the Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman asks where Scottish Labour MPs have been, so I will tell him: campaigning in Hamilton, making sure there is a Labour MSP and that in a year’s time there will be a Labour Government in Edinburgh once again.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I agree that we should welcome all Labour Back Benchers, because they are the people going through the Lobbies every day to keep in place a Labour Government who are saving public services, taking tough but fair decisions on tax—decisions that are opposed by all the Opposition parties—rescuing our public services and driving down poverty. That is what a Labour Government is about, and that is what everyone on the Labour Benches agrees on.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  It is important to listen to Back Benchers and to Front Benchers. It is even important to listen to Opposition Members on occasion, particularly when they are digging their own grave with their party’s policies. More seriously, the point that my hon. Friend raises is important: everybody on the Government Benches wants to make sure that this is a fairer country that is growing again—that wages are growing, that poverty is falling, that inequality is coming down. That is what we need to deliver. Sometimes that will involve tough choices, including all the ones that the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) opposes. Those choices will need to be made, because we are a party of government not a party of protest, but they are made in the interests of our values and of a fairer country and a fairer Britain.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  No, because this Government were formed on the back of disastrous public finances. The Conservative party had announced public spending commitments without having a penny to pay for them. We will not apologise for doing the right thing to put this country back on an even keel.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  We have been making sure that there has been support over the course of the last winter, and the hon. Gentleman will have seen the increase in the state pension at the beginning of April, including for many of his constituents. The question for the Northern Ireland Executive is how they wish to handle this, but on the principle of parity, we would say that the same change should take place in Northern Ireland so that his constituents receive the winter fuel payment this winter.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to raise questions about energy prices—an issue for households of all ages that have been living through the cost of living crisis of recent years. The good news is that the energy price cap will be coming down in July, although I think everybody across the House would like to see it fall significantly further. This Government have been taking steps over the last 11 months to make sure that more households are getting support with their energy bills. Members will have seen the consultation on the doubling of eligibility for the warm home discount, the work to significantly increase the spending on warm home insulation—over £3 billion this year—and the extension of the household support fund. Right across the piece, for households of all ages, not just for pensioners, we do need to make sure that this is a country where more people can afford to heat their homes.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  This is a Chancellor who has brought stability and growth back to the economy and got wages growing once again; one who is driving investment in our public services, which will rescue them; one who has driven up public investment, which is crucial to showing that, once again, we are a country that can do the basics like building houses, filling potholes and the rest.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I think I agree with my hon. Friend, in the sense that the tax system is a progressive tax system. That is the purpose for which it is being used in this case—to drive fairer outcomes for pensioners, and so that millionaires do not receive the benefit of a winter fuel payment but all lower and middle-income pensioners do.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important point, which is that as economic growth returns, as it has over recent months, what matters is that it feeds through to rising living standards, particularly for poorer middle-income households. We need to be honest about this: the reason why wages did not grow under the last Government was that growth was not there. That is exactly what we need to make sure never happens again.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I should have got out of the way, because my hon. Friend has given a direct rebuttal to what was said by the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez). He is entirely correct in every detail of the important points that he has raised. A Labour Government investing in public services and ending austerity: that is what we will be hearing about in the House on Wednesday, and I look forward to hearing Conservative Members explain how they tried to support that spending while opposing every tax rise that was necessary to make it happen.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I have just explained why we are making this announcement now: we want to ensure that the payments can be made in time for the winter. I have not hidden from the fact that last year we made the difficult decision to means-test the winter fuel payment, and that was the right choice to make, but we have listened, which is why we have announced a higher means test. I have directly answered the hon. Member’s question. This is important, but we do need to make some tough decisions. I know that the Liberal Democrats want a universal winter fuel payment, because they think it right to pay hundreds of pounds to millionaires, but I take a different view. I think it is that kind of wishful thinking that created, in 2010, a Liberal Democrat Government who promised to scrap tuition fees and ended up trebling them.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises the important issue of the complexity of pensioner poverty. I will just give one example, which does not get mentioned in these discussions often enough. The growth rate—the value people are getting; the returns on every pound saved into a private pension—absolutely needs to be as strong as possible. Private pensions support the living standards of our pensioners. We need a pension industry that is focused on driving the best possible value for savers.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  It is the hon. Member who is talking bilge. Growth was the highest in the G7 in the first quarter of this year, interest rates have fallen four times, and wages have risen faster in 10 months than they did in 10 years under the Conservatives. What is happening is that we are sorting out their mess and putting Britain on a better track.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that faith in the system has been strained by the failure of the last 14 years—economic failure, public service failure and a failure of basic behaviour in politics—and that is what we need to turn around. She can tell her constituents that wages are growing, pensions are rising, waiting lists are falling and Britain is back.