Without any warning, and with no manifesto backing, Labour moved to scrap the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners.
And despite multiple reports about the likely devastating consequences for at least three million pensioners just above the pension credit eligibility level, the Government appears determined to stick to its guns.
The Government also broke its promise, from the General Election campaign, to introduce a cap on the lifetime costs of social care.
Despite many promises over the years, Labour does not have any plan to reform social care apart from a vague commitment to a ‘national care service’ sometime in the next ten years.
To move forward on reform of the NHS while ignoring social care, as Wes Streeting has announced he is doing, is destined for failure.
It will be difficult for Labour to rebuild trust with the older generations because there is a widespread feeling amongst Silver Voices members that the Government has consciously targeted older people as a lower priority than so-called ‘working people’.
This attitude gives the strong impression that once people retire from paid employment they are regarded as superfluous to society and therefore not worth investing in.
If the Government wants to turn over a new page with older people, then the Budget Speech is the time to do it.
The Chancellor must introduce supplementary measures to mitigate the worst effects of the winter fuel cuts.
Silver Voices suggests that everyone below the higher rate of tax should continue to receive the payment.
And the Chancellor must spike all the speculation that other universal benefits such as the free bus bass and free prescriptions in England are under threat, as well as the future of the state pension itself.
The refusal to unfreeze the lower tax threshold is a very sneaky way to tax all state pensions in the future, and bring in an element of means-testing.
We call on the Government to state clearly that no other universal pensioner benefits will be touched during this Parliament and that the universal state pension is safe in Labour’s hands.
