Time to Make Winter Fuel Allowance Fair
10 October 2011
A number of campaigning organisations, including Contact a Family and Scope, attempt each year to get this benefit paid to those in most need
One of the topics I wrote about in last week’s IL newsletter was the Winter Fuel Allowance: the annual payment which is made to people who are over 60, to help with heating costs.
A number of the responses I received pointed up once again the extraordinary unfairnesses built-in to this benefit. It is paid without means-testing to everyone of the relevant age, whether or not they are working. It is not paid to younger disabled people, however great their need.
There is also an anomaly whereby people who moved to other European countries before 1997 are not eligible, despite the principle that they would continue to receive age-related benefits while living in an EU state.
While you can trace the various political reasons for the current situation, the resulting dog’s breakfast really does us very little credit.
Why should someone earning a generous salary receive tax-free help with their heating bills, because they are over 60? Why should an 85-year-old who left Britain in 1996 to live in a chilly part of France not receive help, while a 65-year-old who took up residence ten years later in a French Caribbean dependency with winter temperatures in the 70s does?
How can we justify refusing help to someone with disabilities that keep them less mobile and more prone to developing infections in the cold, just because they are in their 20s or 30s rather than their 60s? And what about families with a disabled child, a high proportion of whom live in fuel poverty, and are particularly vulnerable to the effects of cold.
A number of campaigning organisations, including Contact a Family and Scope, attempt each year to get this benefit paid to those in most need, but for some reason, the government remains intransigent. Make that governments, because the situation was exactly the same under the last Labour government, who were much more prone to flinging money about with gay abandon.
It is hard to understand why a payment that is so clearly unfair has such universal political support in its unjust application. While other benefits are being subjected to fierce scrutiny, with claimants of DLA subjected to tough assessments on a one by one basis, how is it that we are apparently happy to dole out £200 – £300 irrespective of need, while denying it to others who really could do with the help? Could it be because older people are more likely to vote, and no party dares risk removing an existing perk from a section of society that is likely to punish them for it?
