By Sachin Ravikumar
LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday signalled he was open to reversing a widely criticised cut in winter fuel payments to the elderly, weeks after a bruising set of local election results for his Labour Party.
Starmer told parliament he recognised that older people were still feeling the pressure of a cost-of-living crisis and he wanted to ensure that more pensioners become eligible for winter fuel payments.
“As the economy improves, we want to take measures that will impact on people’s lives, and therefore we will look at the (winter payment) threshold, but that will have to be part of a fiscal event,” he said, referring to a budget expected in October.
Starmer’s Labour government announced the cut soon after taking office last July as part of wider spending reductions which it said were necessary to fix a hole in the public finances left by the previous Conservative administration.
The cuts were cited as one factor in Labour losing ground to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party in local elections earlier this month. Reform also leads in opinion polls.
The payments, worth 200-300 pounds ($268-402), subsidise winter heating bills for millions of older people.
Offering them to more pensioners by adjusting the threshold at which people receive them will be viewed as an embarrassing U-turn for Starmer, who had refused to back down on the issue despite opposition from dozens of Labour lawmakers as well as trade unions close to the party.
Government ministers had argued that many of the fuel payments were received by wealthy people who did not need the help.
Media reports in recent weeks have said the government was considering reversing the cuts following the poor local election results.
($1 = 0.7464 pounds)
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James)
