Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to unveil measures to help the poorest pensioners in next month’s budget after dozens of Labour MPs refused to back a plan to cut the winter fuel allowance.
Despite an easy Commons win for the government, defeating a Conservative motion to scrap the removal of the winter fuel payment from most older people by 120 votes, rebels plan to fight on, and have arranged to meet ministers to push for mitigating measures.
There was also a war of words about how big a rebellion Starmer faced, with No 10 sources insisting only 12 of the 53 Labour MPs who abstained did so without permission. In response, some rebels said whips had encouraged those known to dislike the plan to come up with a legitimate reason to miss the vote.
Just one Labour backbencher, veteran leftwinger Jon Trickett, supported the Conservative-forced motion to scrap the policy, saying afterwards he could “sleep well tonight knowing that I voted to defend my constituents”.
Trickett is now likely to lose the party whip, the same fate of seven Labour MPs who had it suspended for six months in July after rebelling on the two-child benefit cap. Five of the seven rebelled again, with the other two abstaining.
While Starmer’s team hope the victory by 348 votes to 228 will help defuse the issue, opponents of the policy are planning to push ministers to urgently look at extra help for the most vulnerable, amid what one called the “ticking clock” of approaching colder weather.
However, Treasury sources said there were currently no plans to offer more help. Ideas raised by others include an expansion of the warm homes discount, which takes money off electricity bills, or a cheaper social tariff for some pensioners.
At matters stand, the annual payment to pensioners in England and Wales of £200 or £300, depending on age, which reached 10.8 million people last year, will now only be received by about 1.5 million people, those who receive income-related benefits such as pension credit.
Opponents of the plan point out that with pension credit topping up income to just £11,300 a year for an individual and £17,300 for a couple, many pensioners who do not qualify for the fuel payment could still struggle to pay bills, while around a third of those eligible for pension credit have not applied.
In the 90-minute Commons debate before the vote, Rachael Maskell, the MP for York Central, who has been one of the most outspoken Labour critics of the plan, said this likely impact meant the plan should be delayed.
Pensioners, she said, “make the hardest budgetary decisions, harder than those of the Treasury, where there are choices. They have no choice. They have to put a roof over the head, they have to pay for their food, and they have to pay for their heating.”
These people, she added, were “telling us they’re frightened because they won’t switch the switch, because they know if they do, they will have bills that they cannot pay”.
Neil Duncan-Jordan, elected in July as the Labour MP for Poole, said the argument that people in need could just apply for pension credit and thus get the payment missed the point of the current universality.
“Means-testing is supposed to target help at those who need it most. But those who need it most are those who don’t claim it,” he said.
John McDonnell, a former shadow chancellor, who was among the seven MPs to lose the Labour whip in July and who rebelled again on Tuesday, said the move would raise the risk of ill-health or death for vulnerable people and “flies against everything I believe in as a Labour MP”.
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McDonnell, who sits as an independent MP since losing the Labour whip, said: “I do regret voting for a motion put forth by these characters [the Conservatives], but I will have to because there’s no other mechanism. And I say to my people back in Hayes: I want to look at them in their face and say I did the right thing.”
A lot of the concern about the plan is linked to the decision of Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to announce it suddenly in July, as part of a suite of cuts she said were urgently needed because of what she called a £22bn deficit left by the Conservatives.
While Reeves and Starmer argue the scale of this overspend was not known before the election, the shadow pensions secretary, Mel Stride, told the Commons that the plan was not in Labour’s manifesto and was thus duplicitous.
“What happened to integrity?” Stride said. “What happened to transparency? It went out of the window.”
Closing the debate, Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, castigated what she called the “faux outrage” of Conservative MPs who had overseen much bigger cuts in office.
She highlighted the fact that increases to the basic state pension under the so-called triple lock system, which means it rises annually by whichever is the highest of inflation, annual earnings or 2.5%, would mean pensioners gaining more this year than they lost from the allowance.
Based on the latest wage growth figures, which rose by 4% in the three months to July, the full state pension could rise by about £460 a year from April 2025.
Speaking after the vote, Starmer’s deputy spokesperson said the change to the allowance was “not something that he or the chancellor wanted to do – it is necessary as part of our efforts to balance the books and address the £22bn black hole.”