‘Labour’s legacy of higher unemployment and economic decline’<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n All of us suffer from high fuel prices here in the UK, mainly due to choices made by this government.\n<\/p>\n
\n Each of us pays a cost, for example, for green subsidies.\n<\/p>\n
\n But how many knew that the government paid around \u00a31.3 billion last year to stop green energy suppliers delivering electricity to our homes?\n<\/p>\n
\n Incredible though it sounds because the wind was in the wrong part of the grid the government compensated the producers by paying for undelivered power.\n<\/p>\n
\n No wonder they needed to raid pensioners\u2019 \u00a3300 per year help with energy bills.\n<\/p>\n
\n To be fair, some pensioners do very well.\n<\/p>\n
\n Having put more money aside for their retirement and saving more, some pensioners pay higher tax rates.\n<\/p>\n
\n There is an argument that they, perhaps, don\u2019t need the extra \u00a3300.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the government, when they hit all but the poorest pensioners, threw up a peculiar anomaly.\n<\/p>\n
\n The government decided that the benchmark by which poor pensioners were defined was by who was receiving pension credit and who was not.\n<\/p>\n
\n The criteria is simple enough.\n<\/p>\n
\n If you receive, as an individual, less than \u00a3227.10 per week income, \u00a3346.60 as a couple, you can claim pension credit.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the surprise to the government \u2014 after they made the announcement, obviously \u2014 was that around 800,000 pensioners were eligible for pension credit but did not claim it.\n<\/p>\n
\n So many pensioners who were eligible subsequently applied and that number dropped but only by around 100,000.\n<\/p>\n
\n Of course, this government then performed their signature-screeching U-turn so now pensioners below the higher tax rates all receive the winter fuel allowance.\n<\/p>\n
\n The net effect has been an increase in the overall costs to us all.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the saddest outcome of all this is there are still 700,000 pensioner households who are entitled to pension credit but are not claiming it.\n<\/p>\n
\n These households could be claiming an extra \u00a32,100 a year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Pensioners have a specific problem.\n<\/p>\n
\n They are in a far worse position to be able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances.\n<\/p>\n
\n We have a difficult budget coming up and it is right pensioners receive what they are owed, especially when there may be new ways the government can raid their savings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Readers will remember that they slashed winter fuel payments to all but the neediest pensioners, just as we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-235975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}