- Lib Dems call for vote on Winter Fuel Allowance cut this week to avoid ‘damaging public trust’
- DIY A&E: Scots treat their wounds and make slings over fear of hospital waits
- Sharp rise in 999 callers making their own way to hospital
- Cole-Hamilton responds to Swinney conference speech
Lib Dems call for vote on Winter Fuel Allowance cut this week to avoid ‘damaging public trust’
Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper has written to Rt Hon Lucy Powell MP, the Leader of the House of Commons, demanding that MPs be given a vote this week on the government’s proposed cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance for millions of pensioners.
In her letter, Daisy Cooper warns that failing to hold a debate and vote on the issue would risk “damaging public trust in politics” especially given the policy wasn’t included in the Labour manifesto at the election and is now set to go through with “minimal parliamentary scrutiny.”
The letter adds that there are just two weeks to go to protect pensioners from the cut before it comes into force on 16th September.
The Liberal Democrats will tomorrow table a motion backed by all 72 of its MPs to block the government’s proposals through a debate and vote in Parliament.
Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, Daisy Cooper MP said:
Over the past few weeks we have heard from countless pensioners worried about whether they’ll be able to heat their homes this winter.
To push these cuts through without any other measures to mitigate the impact on millions of poorer pensioners, and with minimal parliamentary scrutiny, risks damaging the public’s trust in politics and putting the most vulnerable at risk.
We all appreciate the damage that the Conservative Party did to the public finances and the size of the challenges in front of us, but this is a step in the wrong direction and the proposed cuts must be scrutinised properly.
The government must give MPs the chance to debate better solutions, vote on their cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance and prevent millions of the most vulnerable in our society from losing out.
DIY A&E: Scots treat their wounds and make slings over fear of hospital waits
A new poll commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed that people are suffering in pain or treating themselves rather than go to A&E out of fear of waiting times.
The poll reveals the lengths to which people across the UK went if they needed to use A&E in the past two years, but decided not to, over fears of waiting times.
In the past two years, 1 in 5 Scots surveyed have needed to visit A&E but decided not to because they thought it would take too long to be treated.
Across, the UK, among those who needed A&E but did not go due to fear of waiting times, one in ten (11%) made homemade slings for their limbs, and almost one in three said that they either treated wounds themselves (31%) or prescribed themselves medication (32%).
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said:
Nobody should ignore medical advice to go to A&E but the fact that many are choosing to take urgent medical care into their own hands shows just how badly the SNP have run our emergency departments.
There are clearly major issues within our national health service if there are Scots who would rather grin and bear the pain, than try to turn up to an emergency department.
We need a plan to prevent a winter A&E waiting times crisis. Scottish Liberal Democrats would overhaul the SNP’s failed NHS Recovery Plan, get you fast access to GPs and help people leave hospital on time through a new minimum wage for care workers that is £2 higher.
We would also launch an inquiry into unnecessary deaths as a result of the emergency care crisis.
Sharp rise in 999 callers making their own way to hospital
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today repeated calls for an inquiry into avoidable deaths linked to the emergency care crisis as he revealed new figures showing the number of patients who call 999 who are directed to make their own way to hospital has risen fivefold.
A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request to the Scottish Ambulance Service asking for the reasons that calls were cancelled has revealed that between 2019 and 2023:
The number of patients making their own way to hospital has risen 478%, from 2,281 to 13,182.
A 16% increase in the number of calls cancelled by callers.
There has also been a significant increase in the number of people treated at the scene, with numbers increasing from 7,005 in 2019 to 43,274 in 2023.
Earlier this year a Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request revealed 31 local authorities, including Glasgow, Aberdeen, Fife and Edinburgh, had experienced an increase in average waiting times for purple calls, which represent the most serious category of ambulance call outs.
Mr Cole-Hamilton said:
If you call an ambulance at a moment of crisis, you want to know that someone will be there in time to help you as best they can.
I know from speaking with paramedics that the service is having to adapt as best it can to the extreme pressures that it is under. More and more people are making their own way to hospital or being treated at the scene.
I fear that by ignoring ambulance staff warning of pressure cooker conditions, the Scottish Government has caused intolerable pain for patients.
I want to see an inquiry into the hundreds of avoidable deaths linked to the emergency care crisis. So far that has been obstructed by nationalist MSPs who are scared of what it might reveal.
The Health Secretary needs to recognise the pressures that the service is under and look again at what can be done to improve life for both patients and staff.
Cole-Hamilton responds to Swinney conference speech
Responding to John Swinney’s speech to SNP Conference this afternoon, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said:
After being in power for 17 years the SNP are overseeing spiralling NHS waiting lists and a stagnant economy. While being wracked by scandal and division they have mismanaged vital public services.
Yet John Swinney would rather keep the focus on breaking up the UK as solution to all of Scotland’s ills. It seems the SNP have not learnt anything from the defeat voters handed them in the election.
When I am out knocking on doors, no one is interested in wasting more time on constitutional clashes. They want to see action on long NHS waits, rising violence in schools and our disappointing economic performance. Those are the issues the Liberal Democrats will be focussing on.
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10 Comments
The Labour Party lost all credibility within days of winning the election by scrapping the winter fuel allowance. It was not in the Labour Manifesto and is age discrimination. (Older retired people were singled out as the only group of people to have a cut in their gross income).People often defend the indefensibly low state pension by quoting the add ons such as the winter fuel allowance, free prescriptions and bus passes. Older retired people recently lost their free television licence, got no benefit from the cuts in National Insurance and have now lost their winter fuel allowance representing a £200 or £300 cut in their gross income. Given the correlation between income and demand upon the health services this will also increase the winter pressures on the NHS at a time the Government is committed to reducing waiting times. It is vindictive and does not make sense.
That 29% of children are being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom have a parent in work – and older retired people are suffering from malnutrition and dying from cold in the winter is an absolute disgrace. Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time. Why would any Government choose to make matters worse?
@ Chris Perry,
“Older retired people were singled out as the only group of people to have a cut in their gross income”
Rachel Reeves is working on that! Her first budget is due this autumn.
We’ll all feel it soon enough!
@ Peter Martin
Broken promises? No increase in income tax, NI or VAT? Increased taxation is a reduction in net income. Stopping the winter fuel allowance is a reduction in gross income. Doubt, any other group of people will suffer that?
@ Peter Martin
And older retired people also pay income tax and VAT.
As an older retired person, I am prepared to lose the winter fuel payment because I don’t need it. What is a sensible threshold that determines who needs it and who doesn’t? Paying income tax at a higher than the basic rate is a possibility.
I am shocked that more fuss is not being made about the state of our NHS. My sister works at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and tells me that wards are now allowed to have 5 patients in seats in corridors and, despite this, ambulances are having to stack up for hours on end unable to transfer patients due to lack of beds. Hospitals are totally blocked up by people who are medically ready to be discharged but, for reasons ranging from waiting to get adaptions to their houses to family refusing to let them be transferred to a care home, they remain using hospital beds that are needed by patients in need of treatment. This is a scandal that should be an urgent priority.
@Jim Dapre (writing as another oldie who doesn’t need the fuel payment)
How much work might be involved in HMRC implementing such a change?
What about continuing to let everyone have the fuel payment but as taxable income so anyone above the basic tax threshold only gets a portion of the payment? I ask because the ‘cliff edge’ approach being taken could/would leave some people just above the threshold getting no fuel payment and those below/on the threshold rceiving all of it.
And as was being pointed out on TV recently (can’t recall exactly when) there will be some mobility-impaired people with income just above the threshold who, because of their mobility impairment, spend a lot of time sitting at home – and needing to keep warm while doing so. Hence spending more on their heating.
@ Jim Dapre.
There are millions of working people who don’t need all their income but would feel aggrieved if it was taken from them other than through taxation. Over the years people have tried to justify the low state pension by quoting all the ad ons such as the winter fuel allowance. Therefore, it has been regarded as part of the state pension and to remove it represents a discriminatory cut in gross income.
The majority of older retired people are not well off and have been hit hard by the cost of living crisis. Millions of older retired people can ‘t afford to heat their homes or buy a healthy diet – and it is not just those on, or entitled to, pension credit. Any reduction in their income will have very severe consequences and given the correlation between income and demand on the health services will increase the winter pressures on the NHS.
Indeed Nonconformist. We are both experienced enough to know about the evil of the poverty trap – where a small increase in income means people who are not well off by any means lose much more than that in lost benefits. It can be so severe as to make them to reject a promotion or other enhancement.
We also know of the benefit of Universality, where buy in from the more well off is obtained because there is something in it for them, even if they can only think of the NHS and the pension. Finally, we also know that it is cheaper to tax something than to set up an extra bureaucracy to develop yet another means testing mechanism.
Now if Rachel Reeves had just one advisor with just an ounce of experience and the willingness to think about something in more depth than just the quick headline, she might just be a good enough chancellor to be dangerous.
Sadly for Starmer and fortunately enough for us, they don’t those attributes, but the Lib Dems do.
Hurrah for the oldies!
A part of the pension being nominally hypothecated to Winter fuel is a silly idea. Having it separately means tested on criteria completely unrelated to fuel needs makes it even more ridiculous. Abolish it and just put the money plus the administration savings into pensions.