Should the Winter Fuel Allowance be means tested?
As part of the plan to help fund the Social Care crisis, Teresa May is proposing to have the Winter Fuel allowance means tested.
The Winter Fuel Payment is a key pensioner benefit which gives people up to £300 a year tax-free to help pay heating bills. The Conservatives say this is the largest benefit paid to pensioners and will now be targeted at those who are least well-off.
More than 12million pensioners claimed the payment of between £100 and £300 last year – but it will no longer be available to all if the Tories win the general election
Currently, the Winter Fuel Allowance is given to all pensioners regardless of how wealthy they are.
Means testing the Winter Fuel Allowance could lead to hundreds of millions of pounds worth of savings, and the money would be used to help fund Social Care.
What are your views? Do you think means testing the Winter Fuel Allowance makes economic sense? Is this a fair way to help fund the Social Care crisis?
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But perhaps the mobility were all these retired
Pensioners are driving round in free cars should.
You only have to visit a national trust to see them all lined up while they go for a walk
I am 75 but pay for my own car and pay to keep
These people mobile
Don,t get. me wrong some people need mobility
But it's the pensioners who abuse the system
A few months ago he couldn't put together a Shadow Cabinet, so where will he recruit a full administration? If, in the unlikely event he achieves that, then the existing fragmentation will be augmented by power - a dangerous, heady drug, and all the behind the scenes back stabbing that comes with power.
As I write I can't recall a single coherent, party wide policy statement such is their internal discord.
In the event of a Labour administration there will, undoubtedly, be chaos in the country, a 'padded out,' Brexit deal which will alienate about half the nation.
On the day of the Referendum I wrote on the excellent SS forum thread on Brexit that whilst I didn't fear to result, I did fear the 'peace' afterwards. If Labour come to power then the fragile 'peace' we have now will be utterly shattered.
One person can have saving in the bank, that is above the limit the government want us to have.
Another person can be claiming for all sort of things, they have no bank account or sayings that the government can check on, they also COULD have stacks of cash hidden away. It would not be the first time a tramp has died, only to find thousands of pound hidden away.
You can’t get the payment if you live in Cyprus, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Malta, Portugal or Spain because the average winter temperature is higher than the warmest region of the UK.
That money has already been taken and used where?
PENSIONERS CANT, GET REAL
We must get our own house in order before splashing so much of our money on spurious foreign aid projects.
PS if someone in 1960s when I was teenager said we would have food banks in the 2000+ you would have laughed in their face
No, I would have bl""dy well emigrated.
He stated they were proud to have brought Pensioner Poverty down to 14%, in another part of the interview he stated only those in genuine need of the WFP would receive it.
Joining those two comments together it seems to me only those on about a level of income which allows them to receive pension credit will receive WFP.
This is a long way from just taking it from the very rich.
The hard fact is that this winter I have had to switch off my large tank water heater this winter so do not know what I shall do should the threshold for only those who are on benefits. (I do have an electric shower)
Also I rent my flat so cannot install a more efficient water heater.
This stops all pensioners who receive the basic state pension plus additional modest private pensions which they have worked and contributed to should not be penalised for having done the correct thing in saving for old age.
Reducing it to the means tested level of receiving Pension Credit is too harsh.
Why can't the Tory Manifesto state the level at which it comes into effect?
For those on a basic pension it must be retained and surely all of the info required is in our pension records so it should be fairly simple to administer?
When you reach the pension age there is little one can do to increase income generally especially those individuals with poor health.
Payments for unpaid relatives providing free social care should be addressed properly and provide a meaningful income because they are saving the country billions each year.
The more comfortably off pensioners have paid more tax than those less well off, so why penalise them? Less well off pensioner who have been employed have paid in what was demanded of them. Therefore there is no difference.
Instead of means testing WFA, or anything else, how about the State takes a close look at the millions who exist on benefits, have made a life style out of it, and will, at retirement, receive the highest pensions and top ups, as well as the other perks like WFA?
They know nothing of how our parents grafted to make a living and thereby bring this great nation off it's knees. Once we got in the work place we all went for it and in doing so created the world our children and grand children would inhabit. We worked ourselves stupid to pay a mortgage, sometimes at 15% - that's the property they want to sell before we're gone!
We haven't told them about working hard for a good reward. No, but what we have done is hand everything to them on a plate at no cost to them.
I have a step grandson. At 15 his ambition after school is to sit at home and play on his X-Box, all day and all night. His mother and my nearly son-in-law are required to fund his laziness. It is his birthday this weekend and he is here with his grandparents. Oh my, is he ever going to get a dose of reality from me. The snowflake will melt in the furnace.
The elderly and disabled are soft targets for the Tories and this is yet another of their measures that will harm lots of people.
I'm glad you are not in need of it, lucky you...so donate it to a charity.
They should certainly lose it.
Of course if the Country had not voted for Brexit we would not be having this election and who were the people who mostly voted for brexit, the over 60's who will now be suffering.
I think the winter fuel payment should be scrapped entirely but the pension should be increased by a similar amount. That way it would be taxed meaning it costs the Country less whilst those most in need receive the most.
Surely should be something you claim if income entitles you rather than an automatic payment.
As someone who has worked hard,paid my taxes all in a lowly paid profession I don't agree with means testing the winter fuel allowance.
Why are all benefits not means tested and TAXED?
Why do immigrants receive thousands in benefits when they have not contrubuted 1p in contributions.
The only amendment I would make to this is to clarify that PENSION is NOT a Benefit it is an entitlement!!!!!
STATE PENSION - keep this going please. and send to ALL MPs !!!!?
Read and pass on:
Dear Prime Minister
I wish to ask you a Question:- "Is This True?"
I refer to the Pension Reality Check.
Are you aware of the following ?
The British Government provides the following financial assistance:-
BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER
(bearing in mind they worked hard and paid their Income Tax and National
Insurance contributions to the British Government all their working life)
Weekly allowance: £106.00
IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN
(No Income Tax and National Insurance contribution whatsoever)
Weekly allowance: £250.00
BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER
Weekly Spouse Allowance: £25.00
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN
Weekly Spouse Allowance: £225.00
BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER
Additional Weekly Hardship Allowance: £0.00
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN
Additional Weekly Hardship Allowance: £100.00
A British old age pensioner is no less hard up than an illegal immigrant/refugee yet receives nothing
BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER
TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT: £6,000
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN
TOTAL YEARLY BENEFIT: £29,900
Please read all and then forward to all your contacts so that we can lobby for a decent state pension.
After all, the average pensioner has paid taxes and contributed to the growth of this country for the last 40 to 60 years.
Sad isn't it? Surely it's about time we put our own people first.
Please have the guts to forward this. or copy an paste
I JUST DID!
Pensioners lived through or remember the aftermath of the fascist threat that brought about WW2. Winston Churchill championed the European Convention on Human Rights and International conventions to protect those fleeing persecution, leading to an agreed set of rights to asylum for the vulnerable and desperate.
Our country is proud to offer safe harbour to such people.
Your post is one I have seen before, spreading hatred and misinformation.
A Refugee is a person who has been forced to flee, often in fear of their life. The burden of proof, and it is a tough process, is on them to demonstrate the threat is genuine. If they prove this to be the case, they are granted leave to remain, usually for 5 years, and some need to join our Benefits system to survive. Contrary to false claims, they receive no additional or special help. Many find work, and are desperate to finance themselves. Some are skilled people who add value to our economy or set up businesses which also contribute. In this way they begin to pay taxes.
You may argue desperate asylum seekers should simply not be allowed to stay in the first place, what ever their case, but their right to ask for asylum is enshrined in international law based in human decency.
Those granted Refugees status are able to claim help such as Jobseekers Allowance and related support, but whatever the amount, it is equal to that received by a British Citizen. Perhaps the point is that pensioners are treated less well by the benefits system than than non-pensioners, hence the fight many of us are undertaking to protect the triple lock and the heating allowance.
While in the process of claiming asylum, vulnerable people in this situation are, frankly, treated as the lowest of the low. They flee danger, including things like bombs dropped by their own governments, female genital mutilation, genocide, forced child militant recruitment, arrive here, and are sent, with no choice in the matter, to a 'dispersal' town, to live in accommodation generally agreed to be of the lowest standard. often crowded hostels or poorly maintained homes in extremely deprived neighbourhoods where services sometimes struggle to cope. Their rent and utilities are provided, which you may think unfair, and that they should be kept in some kind of camp.
They receive £37 a week to cover all other living costs. That's roughly £5 a day for travel, food, clothes, sanitary products, household cleaning items, etc etc. £37.
Not £250.
If a woman is pregnant she needs good nutrition and to look after herself. For that, she gets another £3 a week. If she has a baby under 1, she gets £5 a week extra on top of their allowance. For a child between one and three years, another £3.
I don't know where the figures you quote came from but, frankly, they are so wrong only one conclusion is possible. They are motivated by hate and deserve to be laughed at.
Stop scape goating people who actually get the absolute minimum to survive after having gone through hell to seek help elsewhere.
The real struggle is protect all our communities, elderly, young, with a disability, those seeking refuge. Picking on one another is exactly what serves those who hope to take welfare away.
Also the cost of implementing the change could well out way any cost saving.
But we are lucky enough just now that we can live
without it and we think that it should be means tested.
As per a previous comment i am losing my support for may and am convinced we will not hear the worst until she is back in power
As for the comment about personal pension comment not all pensions produce vast amounts of money so how do you set a means test amount and what would it be!
I certainly don't have a pension that allows me to live abroad during the winter months despite having worked since i was 15
If the power companies were brought to book about the extortionate charges for fuel perhaps the fuel payment would not be needed
Need to have real world figures to see if it will actually save tax payers money or cost more than it could save.
The MP's do not need to worry with their pays and all the extras they claim do they not claim for second houses ????when some people do not even have one house!!!!!!!!!
Everyone has paid into the system and theoretically should get it but it should be a benefit for the needy only so yes, means testing should be introduced.
If we need to save money anywhere then stop all foreign aid. Charity begins at home. Only pay in to help those affected by disasters such as earthquakes, floods etc.
If someone feels that they are well off enough that they don't need it, there should be a mechanism that they can decide to put the money back in the system - that would be far simpler.
Some years back, in the days of SAGA someone did some calculations on this subject and the conclusion was that it would be more expensive to have a means tested system and that it would be more expensive than to pay to all those entitled.