Dear Val,
I think the crux of this whole matter is not whether, or not, stopping the winter fuel payment to pensioners living abroad is unfair. It is true that it seems unjust to penalise people living in the colder parts of France which are very often colder than Scotland!
But where do you draw the line? Cornwall is much warmer than Yorkshire. Parts of Spain can be cold; Greece can have snow in winter. Do you have a system whereby they assess according to mean winter temperatures in each department or county? It's all a question of precedent. Either older expats receive the payments or they do not! Certainly they don't in Australia. They do not even have index linking like expats in Europe.The French don't receive such a payment and they suffer the same cold!
The winter fuel payment is not part of the pension; it is a grant or allowance. One is not entitled to it by right! It isn't part of the national insurance contributions we all paid in order to get a state pension and national health service. I sympathise with people living in France, but this payment has been an extra subsidy introduced in 1997 by the Labour Government after a particularly hard winter. Now, some 16 years later, the demography has changed. There are more pensioners and fewer working people to support them. Nine million households in Britain had the payment in 2012. Multiply that by £200 and you can quickly see the enormous cost to the tax payer.
We do get a winter fuel payment, but pass it on to the family who need it more than we do. And in any case, all of us will lose it under the next government.
So my view is let's be glad while it lasted, be thankful that we have an index linked pension and just wrap up warm!
Ann
Val says - very well argued Ann, but you are coming from an angle where you can afford to give this to the family, many others here are not in that lucky situation and they are the ones I would suggest we are fighting for.
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