Labour minister's message to pensioners after winter fuel payment cutSource: BBC Breakfast
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00:00One of the announced changes that we already know about and that's the cut to winter fuel payments for
00:07millions of pensioners
00:09What do you say to pensioners watching this morning or their families?
00:13Having heard that energy bills will go up from October and knowing that 10 million of those pensioners will now lose
00:20What for some is that vital support of up to 300 pounds this winter?
00:24Well, this is not a decision that we
00:28Wanted to take when we came into office. We found
00:31billions of pounds of unfunded
00:34Spending commitments that was confirmed by the Office for Budget Responsibility
00:39Who said that they didn't know about this either. They said it was one of the
00:45biggest
00:46unfunded spending years outside the Covid period that they
00:50That they knew about so we had to make a very difficult decision there and it's really important that people know
00:57That if they're entitled to pension credit, they'll still get this benefit. There are an estimated almost
01:04900,000 pensioners
01:06Who are entitled to pension credit who don't currently claim it in addition to that
01:13On that point we've had viewers contact us when we've touched on this before and said if there are
01:18900,000 pensioners not claiming the support they're entitled to, why does the government write to them and make sure that they're aware and help them claim it?
01:24We will do everything we can to encourage people to claim this. We want people to claim
01:30things that they're entitled to
01:32So we'll do everything we can to make sure that happens
01:35But the other thing it's really important that pensioners are confident in is that we will protect the triple lock
01:42Throughout the course of this Parliament that will protect pensioners incomes relative to earnings or prices
01:48Whichever is higher in any given year
01:51so there are
01:53Measures to protect the pension alongside this very difficult decision that we had to take