Sir Keir Starmer is facing questions about when more pensioners will get access to the winter fuel payment after he signalled a partial U-turn on the deeply controversial policy to cut the benefit.
It has been suggested pensioners could have to wait for more than a year to have the allowance reinstated meaning it will not be in place to help the elderly through this winter.
Officials were unable to say how many more pensioners would be eligible or if the plans would be altered in time for next winter.
The Prime Minister said on Wednesday that “as the economy improves” he wanted to widen eligibility for the payments, which are currently only available to those on Pension Credit, or similar benefits.
“I recognise that people are still feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis, including pensioners,” he said.
“And as the economy improves, we want to make sure people feel those improvements as their lives go forward. That is why we want to ensure that as as we go forward more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payment.”
He suggested further details will come at a “fiscal event”, likely to be the next budget in the autumn.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Labour backbenchers are among those to ask how quickly the Government can implement the turnaround.
The cut to the benefit, along with other sweeping reforms to the welfare state, was an issue Labour campaigners were challenged about on the doorsteps during May’s local elections.
The party lost councillors and the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Ms Badenoch has written to the Prime Minister demanding to know whether the reversal would “come into effect in time for payments to be made for this winter”, given a budget could be “six months away”.
In her letter, she warned: “Pensioners are typically living on fixed incomes. They need to be able to plan ahead. We have heard from many who have suffered through the past winter as a result of your Government’s callous decision to remove their winter fuel payments. Some have had to choose between heating and eating.”
Rachael Maskell, a Labour backbencher who has been outspoken about the decision, welcomed the movement from the Government.
But the York Central MP argued pensioners will still lose out as the deadline to apply for pension credit – which could govern eligibility for the payment – is likely to fall around the same time as the budget.
Ms Maskell said: “It seems that the sequencing of this would preclude people this coming winter, unless they did something else to enable people to get it.
“Now that’s an assumption that it is going to be predicated on a pension credit. We just don’t know. But it could mean that people would then go cold for a further winter.”
The Times suggested pensioners could have to wait for more than a year to have the payment reinstated, citing Government sources worried about ageing computer systems.
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown – who as chancellor introduced the universal winter fuel payment – suggested the richest pensioners could still not receive it.
“I think there is a case, for example, for people on the top rate of tax not receiving it, but that’s something the Government has got to decide,” he told Sky News.
