Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper has been talking about the Lib Dems’ efforts to halt the Government’s plans to cut Winter Fuel Allowance for all but the very poorest pensioners.
While the party has no objection to some restrictions being made for wealthier pensioners who don’t need it, we feel that the cut-off, at Pension Credit level, is too harsh and will lead to vulnerable pensioners suffering this Winter.
Daisy told LBC:
Daisy Cooper has also written to Lucy Powell MP, the Leader of the House of Commons, demanding that MPs be given a vote this week on the Government’s proposal.
In her letter, Daisy 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.
We tabled a motion backed by all 72 of our MPs to block the government’s proposals through a debate and vote in Parliament.
Daisy 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.
Here is Daisy’s letter in full:
Here at Liberal Democrat Voice, we’ve made a point over the years of covering maiden speeches of new Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians and, with a huge new cadre of MPs elected on 4 July, you can expect a lot of those in the coming weeks. But, at the other end of the building, there are retirements and, as part of the arrangement for a retiring peer, there is an opportunity to make a valedictory speech. On Friday, Judith Jolly made hers after more than thirteen years in the Lords, having served as a Government Whip in the final years of the Coalition and then as our Frontbench spokesperson on Defence and then Health between 2015 and 2019…
Yes, they’re back, and so, with a new Parliament to look forward to, let’s try again with this column…
Before I move on to the week ahead, I thought that I couldn’t do so without mentioning last week’s debates on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act which saw its final stages in the Lords last Monday. Dispiriting though it was to see such a ghastly piece of legislation passed, I take some (very) slight comfort in the fact that Liberal Democrat peers were in the forefront of the attempt to first defeat the Bill at Second Reading and then to salvage what could be salvaged from the wreckage that ensued, 
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