Political reporter
PAConservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said she cannot commit to fully reversing the Labour government’s cuts to the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
Badenoch said the party “could look at changes”, but said when the government revises policy “you don’t know whether you can go back to exactly where you were before”.
She told BBC Breakfast: “So I can’t just say, ‘oh, I’ll reverse every single thing they’ve done’.”
She argued her party had forced Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to U-turn on the decision to withdraw winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
More than 10 million pensioners lost out on payments worth up to £300 after the Labour government restricted eligibility for the pension top-up last year, in one of its first decisions in office.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir said ministers would alter the threshold to allow “more pensioners” to qualify for the payments again.
But he did not spell out the details of how many pensioners would be entitled to claim the payments, or when the change would take effect.
Sir Keir said the policy would be changed in the autumn, when the Chancellor Rachel Reeves sets out her spending and economic plans in her next budget.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Badenoch said the Conservatives “never touched the winter fuel payment” during their 14-year stint in government.
But when repeatedly pressed on what her party would do about winter fuel, if it was in power now, Badenoch did not commit to restoring the payments to all pensioners.
“The whole economy is topsy turvy,” she said. “We need to look at all of it in the round. But we shouldn’t do this on the backs of vulnerable pensioners.”
The winter fuel payment is a lump sum of £200 a year for households with a pensioner under 80, or £300 for households with a pensioner over 80.
It was previously paid in November or December to all pensioners, but 10.3 million lost out last year after the government made changes to save an estimated £1.4bn.
When she launched her Tory leadership campaign in 2022, Badenoch said: “I have a lot of people in my constituency telling me that they don’t need the winter fuel payments that we give them, because they can afford it.”
Badenoch told BBC Breakfast that was still her view.
“I have always said millionaires should not get winter fuel,” she said. “So we could look at changes. But we don’t have a system that knows where to begin.”
She added: “Overall the situation we’re in is that millions of people had something taken away from them that shouldn’t have happened.”
She defended her performance at PMQs and her decision to ask the prime minister about inflation, rather than winter fuel, in her first question.
“Lots of people who have never done PMQs all have lots of suggestions,” Badenoch said.
“I’m doing my job the way I think it should be done. And we’re getting Labour to U-turn.”
Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party have called for the winter fuel allowance to be restored in full.
Pressure to change course has grown in recent weeks, with some Labour MPs and councillors blaming the policy for the party’s losses at last month’s local elections in parts of England.
Wales’s Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan has called for winter fuel payments for all but the richest of pensioners.
Ahead of Welsh elections next year, Lady Morgan has become more publicly critical of the UK Labour government in recent weeks, making complaints over devolution, benefits cuts and other issues.
