I am a working pensioner, as is my husband. We don’t need the winter fuel payment, so the withdrawal of it felt right and fair.
The new rules – making any pensioner with an income of up to £35,000 eligible – still exclude us, but now, vitally, help all those older people who do depend on the benefit. They were physically and emotionally harmed by the policy of the unforgivably high-handed Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, whose strategy seems to be to burden those with least power and money in our society. This turnabout was the result of fierce campaigning by older citizens and others and the recent local elections, when older voters abandoned Labour.
I am frequently on the buses. For months now, fellow passengers, many of them retirees, have shared their stories about living on the edge. Most have lost faith in the main political parties. Those who had previously always voted told me they were on the verge of giving up or of voting for Reform, a party run by multimillionaires posturing as saviours of “the people”.
I have befriended Mr Jenkins, who worked on the railways. He, a widower with no children, endures deprivation without respite. The last time we were bussing off somewhere, he was livid: “Nobody in the Conservatives or Labour cares. They want us to die, to save them the little money they hand to us. We are not scroungers. People like me have worked all our lives. When elections come, they knock on our doors. Democracy is just a trick.”
The charity Independent Age warns that “more than two million pensioners in the UK live below the poverty line, with many more hovering precariously above it. The individuals who make up this group are often invisible, overlooked and unheard.”
Deprived pensioners must share Mr Jenkins’s despair and cynicism. So too other Britons whose legitimate needs have been disregarded by successive governments. It’s tremendously sad. And, in the end, tremendously bad for our nation and those who govern us.
With so many fearing the latest benefits changes, and the Labour Government making colossal policy misjudgements, there is now so much noise and chaos in the public space that it is not possible to think clearly, or talk with compassion or indeed good sense about what options the current Government has to stabilise its finances, revive the economy and serve the needs of the population.
After this fiasco, which secretary of state or minister would dare to remind pensioners that the triple lock has resulted in a good many of them ending up being more advantaged than many young people, all children in low income families, and the mentally and physically disabled of working age? Only a small proportion of those working hard today for better futures will get what many of us pensioners have.
We live in the same flat I bought back in 1978. All around are big houses with one or two old inhabitants. When we stop seeing them, we know they have gone into care homes or passed on. One home, owned previously by a couple who were active in the local Conservative Party, has been empty for three years. No young family can afford it. So it stands looking sadder, more derelict and covered in riotous ivy. This can’t be right.
As the Resolution Foundation points out, “over the past four decades, the relative poverty rate for pensioners has fallen from a peak of 41 per cent in 1989 to 18 per cent… Pensioners used to be, by far, the most likely to be in poverty – now they are the least likely. This change in the relationship between old age and low income is one of the most profound social and economic changes this country has seen over the past few decades.”
That means having a good enough life and real influence. Fuel payments have been restored. With rights come responsibilities. Those of us who can should now stand with other unseen and unheard benefits dependents being denied a half-decent life.
Our days are numbered. Wouldn’t it be gratifying to be remembered for fighting for a fairer country not just for us, but for all?
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