News from The Labour Party

Tories’ chilling cuts for pensioners – Purnell and Miliband

James Purnell MP, Labour’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and Ed Miliband MP, Labour’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, today wrote to their shadow counterparts, Chris Grayling and Greg Clark, challenging them to say where the Tories’ proposed cuts of £110m from their departments’ budgets would fall.

Cuts on this scale would be equivalent to 32,000 of the most vulnerable households not getting Warm Front scheme help to heat and insulate their homes.

The Tories have already opposed the measures we took in the Pre-Budget report to help pensioners during the winter, such as paying pensioners an extra £60 this January, trebling the value of the cold weather payments that are being paid out now, increasing the standard minimum income guarantee and an extra £100 million pounds allocated to the Warm Front scheme over the next two years.

James Purnell MP said:

“People will be dismayed to hear that the Tories are planning cuts at just the wrong time.

“Chilling cuts for pensioners are the last thing we need as we face the economic downturn. David Cameron’s ‘do nothing’ approach is in stark contrast to the real help that the Labour Government is offering older people.”

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• "We need what you might call 'one nation banking'" - 3 February 2012
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