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<\/div>\nThe final act in this slow motion U-turn has played out.<\/p>\n
The arc of this row runs to almost a year. It was late July last year when I was among a bunch of reporters called into the Treasury to question the then new chancellor about her out-of-the-blue policy to take the Winter Fuel Payment from millions of pensioners.<\/p>\n
Rachel Reeves limited the payment to only those pensioners in receipt of pension credit or other means-tested benefits \u2013 around 1.5 million \u2013 saving up to \u00a31.5bn a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Ever since Labour MPs have grumbled they’ve been taking heat for it.<\/p>\n
The issue sat like a giant toad on the political news agenda all summer, hundreds of those newly elected Labour MPs deluged with complaints. <\/p>\n
And it never really went away. <\/p>\n
At the local elections in England and the parliamentary by-election in Runcorn in Cheshire last month, it came up repeatedly on the doorstep.<\/p>\n
Then we got the U turn, in three parts.<\/p>\n
Two-and-a-half weeks ago, the prime minister said the threshold would be moving.<\/p>\n
Last week, the chancellor said the new recipients would get it this coming winter.<\/p>\n
We now know who will qualify and who will have to pay it back.<\/p>\n
A couple of thoughts: could the government have done this in the first place? <\/p>\n
Some privately say: absolutely.<\/p>\n
Others say there was genuinely real concern in the Treasury about the state of the books and they felt compelled to do something to reduce so-called in year costs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Secondly: once they decided to move, they have moved pretty quickly, albeit announcing the U-turn in iterative steps, one week after another.<\/p>\n
We are not being kept waiting until the Budget in the autumn, or even the Spending Review on Wednesday – here we have it, the new threshold.<\/p>\n
So, how will the government pay for it? It is projected to cost \u00a31.25bn. <\/p>\n
Ministers say there won’t be a “permanent” increase in borrowing. <\/p>\n
So how much borrowing will there be, and for how long? And which other budgets may be squeezed as a result?<\/p>\n
Or which taxes may have to rise?<\/p>\n
For many within Labour this whole debacle was the single biggest misstep of the party’s first year in office. <\/p>\n
They will now hope to put it behind them. <\/p>\n
But it’s one of those things forever likely to remain in the biography of this government – with questions asked of Rachel Reeves about it.<\/p>\n
Attention now turns to the Spending Review on Wednesday – where Labour folk will hope there are no other hostages to fortune that cause them quite so much grief as this has.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Published at Mon, 09 Jun 2025 13:54:30 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris Mason: Labour hopes to put winter fuel misstep behind them The final act in this slow motion U-turn has played out. The arc of this row runs to almost a year. It was late July last year when I was among a bunch of reporters called into the Treasury to question the then new… Continue reading Chris Mason: Labour hopes to put winter fuel misstep behind them<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk-politics","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}