The Labour government is allowing poverty to “seep into every part of people’s lives”, experts have said after ministers committed to cutting the winter fuel payment.
Recently-published forecasts from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that 50,000 pensioners will be pushed into poverty within a year by cuts to the winter fuel payment, sparking calls from anti-poverty experts for the government to reverse its decision before the colder weather gets even worse.
Nearly 10 million older people will lose their right to the winter fuel allowance, worth up to £300, after chancellor Rachel Reeves announced rule changes to plug a funding gap.
The one-off payment will now be limited to those claiming pension credit. It’s a policy decision demonstrating that “older people continue to be neglected”, according to Sarah Marie Hall, an academic and inequalities researcher at the University of Manchester.
“Many people thought the Labour government was coming in on a helpful mandate,” she said. “There’s been lots of talk of austerity ending, but austerity only continues to bite. And it bites hardest for those most in need.”
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The government said the transition would be mitigated by a drive to push more older people to sign up for pension credit, but earlier this month the Big Issue revealed how wait times for claims to be processed doubled in a month – just as temperatures across the country dipped below freezing.
“We talk a lot about in-work poverty. We talk a lot about young people in poverty. All of that is absolutely right – it’s critical,” Hall added. “What can often remain hidden is that a lot of older people experience extreme poverty too.
“It’s not a case of a cliff-edge. It’s entering into later life with that very austere condition extending further, there’s no escape from it. It’s endemic and it seeps into every part of people’s lives.”
Welfare secretary Liz Kendall published the data in a letter to the House of Commons work and pensions committee this week. The figures showed that the means-testing of winter fuel payments will plunge approximately 100,000 more pensioners into relative poverty this decade.
Relative poverty refers to a level of hardship for those living in a household whose income is below 60% of that year’s median income.
The pervasive rhetoric that pensioners are all wealthy and living comfortably plays a role in policy decisions too, Hall said.
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“Talking about older people as being better off is really dismissive of the differences felt in that group as much as in any other – those of us working in this field, and the people who are living it, know that there’s no one issue.”
She added: “We’re not only talking about older people, we’re often talking about older people from working class backgrounds. We might be talking about older people who live alone and can’t share any financial burden. It might be older people who are racially minoritised – I’ve been working around older women asylum seekers and refugees, and these decisions around poverty are absolutely pernicious for that group.
“But that damaging narrative can be inferred from things like the government cutting winter fuel payment, or not paying enough in pension credit.”
Research and data on poverty is important, Hall explained, but the real-world impact of figures released by the government can be lost.
“Poverty isn’t felt as figures,” she said. “It’s felt physically, emotionally, materially. Older people facing poverty have likely been sliding in and out of it over a long time. And a significant number will now be pushed deeper into it by virtue of literally pounds and pence that they receive through their pension.”
With only around 1.5 million pensioners eligible for the winter fuel payment this year, tens of thousands will be forced to choose between essentials, analysts said.
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“We know that falling into poverty means they will have to make difficult decisions about what to cut back on, whether that’s food, heating or other costs,” Tom Pollard, head of social policy for the New Economics Foundation, told Big Issue.
“For older people in particular, this can leave them even more vulnerable to poor health and isolation.”
Around 66,000 new claims for pension credit were made between the end of July and mid-September, with more following since.
“It’s all well and good saying more people will be encouraged to apply for pension credit,” Hall said. “Where is the support with that? Where are the local hubs? Where’s the regeneration of community groups or the funding for communities? Without those things, relying on people being able to claim pension credit will only serve to reify the same inequalities we’re dealing with already.”
The government’s figures take housing costs into account, but the effects of cutting the winter fuel payment can’t be considered in isolation from the state of the UK’s housing stock and rent crisis, Hall added.
“One of the assumptions that’s often made is that older people are heating their own homes. But the number of older people in private rent has soared over the last 20 years just like it has with other age groups.
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“Cutting the winter fuel allowance is in the mix with all these other factors. Plenty of people are finding it really difficult to heat their homes because of the condition and affordability of it. Our housing stock is very old in general, it’s poorly insulated, it’s expensive to heat, and it’s more likely that older people will be living somewhere that hasn’t been refurbished in a long time.
“It’s a thousand paper cuts,” she added. “Policies have a life, their own social life – we live them day-to-day. They have an effect beyond the moment in which they’re implemented, and they often almost immediately go out of date.
“People will comment on how much more bread is now, on how much more buses are now. Living is really expensive. The government needs to make sure that its policies have future-proofing built into them, they can’t just keep increasing the retirement age. These issues aren’t going to go away any time soon.”
A government spokesperson told Big Issue that the modelling on poverty estimates was “produced as part of routine policy advice”.
They added: “The modelling is subject to a range of uncertainties and does not take into account the significant work we’re doing to encourage pension credit take-up. Our awareness drive has resulted in a 152% increase in claims since July.
“The modelling also doesn’t reflect that we have put in place extra support for those who need it most, such as our extension of the household support fund. Many pensioners will also benefit from the £150 warm home discount and cold weather payments to help with energy bills and millions of pensioners are also set to benefit from an increase of up to £470 to the state pension in April.
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“This government inherited a £22bn black hole in our public finances, which means we needed to take tough decisions to balance the books. We continue to urge pensioners to check their eligibility for pension credit to ensure as many people as possible receive the support they’re entitled to.”
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