There has been no impact assessment of how the decision to strip millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments will affect them, Keir Starmer has said.
The Prime Minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves decided to means-test the payments, worth up to £300, to help fill a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances.
Pressed on whether an impact assessment would be published, Sir Keir Starmer told reporters travelling with him to Washington DC: “There isn’t a report on my desk which somehow we’re not showing, that I’m not showing, as simple as that.”
And he said the Government was not legally required to produce one.
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A Downing Street spokeswoman said some statistical work had been done, but nothing on what impact the change might have on vulnerable pensioners.
There was a legal duty to consider the “equality implications” of any policy development and “that happened in the usual way to assess the proportion of protected characteristics, such as age and gender who claim winter fuel payments”, the spokeswoman added.
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Clashes at PMQs over winter fuel pay cuts
Asked whether an assessment should have been done to work out whether elderly people might be harmed as a result of the change, the spokeswoman said: “The Government will be ensuring that those who are most vulnerable and should be receiving support are receiving it, and that’s why there is a huge effort to try and convert people onto pension credit.
“And also, we want people to be applying for the wider support, which is also there for the most vulnerable.”
The government has been under pressure from the Tories to publish an impact assessment of the plan that will reduce the number of recipients from about 10.8 million last winter to an estimated 1.5 million this year.
During Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, opposition leader Rishi Sunak asked Sir Keir twice if he would publish an impact assessment on the policy.
Mr Sunak said: “Today, pensioners watching will have seen that the prime minister has repeatedly refused to admit or to publish the consequences of his decision, and we will continue holding him to account for that.”
The prime minister accused the Conservative leader of having “no contrition, no responsibility for the economic black hole, the broken NHS, the prison crisis, the ruinous legacy of 14 years of failure”.