Sir Keir Starmer has signalled a U-turn on the deeply controversial cuts to winter fuel payments.
He made clear at Prime Minister’s Questions that the Government was looking at relaxing the restrictions on the payments which currently mean only people getting Pension Credit, or similar benefits, are eligible.
He highlighted that the UK economy was the fastest growing in the G7 group of wealthy nations and cuts to interest rates.
But with inflation hitting 3.5%, he added: “I recognise that people are still feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis including pensioners.
“And as the economy improves, we want to make sure people feel those improvements as their lives go forward.
“And that is why we want to ensure that as as we go forward more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payment.”
Challenged by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to make clear whether the Government was planning to “U-turn” on the decision to cut the winter fuel allowance, Sir Keir added: "As the economy improves, we want to take measures that will impact on people's lives. And therefore we will look at the threshold, but that will have to be part of a fiscal event."
But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged the PM to apologise to pensioners hit by the cuts.
“The least those people deserve is an apology for this punitive policy and a serious proposal from the Prime Minister on how he will begin to pick up the pieces from his Government’s disastrous decision,” he said.
Earlier, Labour MP Diane Abbott had warned that reductions to winter fuel payments are cutting through to the public like Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax.
She argued that the political damage of the deeply controversial policy was not worth the savings to rebuild Britain’s dire public finances.
Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are now reconsidering the policy, and whether the restrictions on the payments could be made less stringent.
“Remember Mrs Thatcher, the poll tax, it just cut through, it wasn’t the worse thing she ever did in my opinion..it cut through,” Ms Abbott, who was first elected to Parliament in 1987, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“I think winter fuel is like that.
“It could be Keir Starmer’s poll tax and you know she tried to drive through the poll tax and she was gone within the year.”
She added: “For the money that Rachel got out of it, it wasn’t worth it.”
Labour suffered heavy losses in the May 1 local elections, and lost the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged amid anger at the cuts to winter fuel payments.
Ms Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington who party chiefs tried to stop from standing at the last election, also slammed Sir Keir’s “island of strangers” speech on immigration as “very damaging” to the PM, claiming it had a “little hint of Enoch Powell”.
No10 rejects this claim.
Dozens of Labour MPs are pushing for the cuts to winter fuel payments to at least be partially reversed.
Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will press on with Labour’s £5 billion plans for welfare cuts on Wednesday, arguing that reform is needed to make sure the system survives.
She is expected to say there is a “risk” the welfare state would collapse without the proposed changes, which include tightening the eligibility criteria for the main disability benefit in England, the personal independence payment (Pip).
The Government hopes the proposals can save £5 billion a year by the end of the decade.
