People receiving certain Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits will be excluded from receiving the Winter Fuel Payment under Rachel Reeves’ new strategy. The warning has been issued to DWP beneficiaries that the Winter Fuel Payments, which can amount to as much as £600, are set to become more “targeted.”
Under the proposed changes, only those on Pension Credit and certain means-tested benefits will automatically qualify for the Winter Fuel Payments. Consequently, claimants who receive Attendance Allowance, Bereavement Support Payment, Carer’s Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, New style Employment and Support Allowance, Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and State Pension will not be eligible for these payments in the upcoming winter.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has commented on the situation, with its director Paul Johnson stating: “Rachel Reeves is within her rights to feel somewhat aggrieved. It was always clear and obvious that the spending plans she inherited were incompatible with Labour’s ambitions for public services, and that more cash would be required eventually.”
READ MORE:How Rachel Reeves’ speech will affect you including winter fuel payment cuts and public sector pay rises
Economic experts are sounding the alarm over the scale of financial pressures that should have been addressed by the previous government. Mr Johnson said: “If the scale of these overspends and spending pressures was apparent in the spring and in lots of cases, there’s no reason to suppose otherwise then it is hard to understand why they weren’t made clear or dealt with in the spring budget.”
He continued: “Jeremy Hunt’s £10bn cut to national insurance looks ever less defensible. On asylum costs, the decision to effectively stop processing claimants, and to budget virtually nothing for the resultant costs of housing them, looks like very poor policy making. The new chancellor is right to be cross.”
Furthermore, the Resolution Foundation has warned that the Chancellor’s autumn budget could bring a ‘severe challenge’, as the government plans to reduce public sector debt without adding to the £23bn tax rises announced by the previous government.
The foundation said: “The chancellor’s challenge in the autumn budget will become even more severe if she wishes to maintain even modest fiscal buffers or if bad news about the growth or interest rates materialise in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) autumn budget forecasts. If the OBR was to mark down its forecast for trend productivity growth by just 0.2 percentage points, it would blow a further £17bn hole in the public finances.”
The Resolution Foundation also issued this warning: “When delivering the autumn budget, the government must continue to prioritise its growth ‘mission’ and focus on increasing living standards. Today’s announcements included cuts to some transport investment and £1.5bn cuts to winter fuel payments. If this approach was repeated at the Autumn Budget, this would both hamper growth, and damage living standards.”
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