Sir Keir Starmer has rejected calls for a U-turn over the decision to strip winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners after Labour suffered a backlash at the ballot box.
The Prime Minister acknowledged his Government needed to “explain the decisions that we’ve taken” after a “disappointing” set of election results.
Welsh First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan said the decision to means-test the previously universal benefit was “something that comes up time and again” as she called for a “rethink”.
Downing Street confirmed “there will not be a change to the Government’s policy” despite the concerns raised by Lady Morgan and other senior Labour figures about the removal of the annual payments worth up to £300 to pensioners.
The Prime Minister’s press secretary said the Government will not be “blown off course” after the local election results.
He said: “We were elected as a stable and serious party after 14 years of chaos and decline.”
The issue was discussed around the Cabinet table on Tuesday and Sir Keir said: “I was really clear that most prime ministers, after a disappointing set of results like that, would get in the warm bath of saying ‘well, it’s the electoral cycle, it was close’.
“I’m not going to do that. I think it’s really important that we indicate to voters that we get it. I think we need to explain the decisions that we’ve taken.
“We had to stop the chaos, we had to stabilise our economy and that’s what we’ve done.”
He said the Government now had to “turbocharge” efforts to deliver the change people voted for at the general election.
In last week’s contests Labour lost the previously safe Runcorn and Helsby constituency in a by-election and almost 200 councillors as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made sweeping gains.
Lady Morgan also fears Reform making significant gains in Wales at next year’s Senedd election.
In a speech in Cardiff she said there were “two Labour governments working together” in Cardiff Bay and Westminster but insisted she would challenge Sir Keir where they disagreed.
Lady Morgan said: “The cut in winter fuel allowance is something that comes up time and again, and I hope the UK Government will rethink this policy.”
She also said the UK Government’s welfare reform proposals “are causing serious concern here, where we have a higher number of people dependent on disability benefits than elsewhere”.
Asked about her comments, Sir Keir’s press secretary said: “We won’t agree on everything, but we are aligned in our mission to deliver security and renewal for working people.”
The Guardian reported that, while a full restoration of the universal winter fuel payment was unlikely, the Government was considering whether to increase the £11,500 threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.
But such a move has been rejected by the Prime Minister, partly because the payment is now aligned with eligibility for pension credit and widening access to that would wipe out any savings from the policy.
The decision last July to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners was intended to save around £1.5 billion a year, with more than nine million people who would have previously been eligible losing out.
Cabinet ministers acknowledged the winter fuel payment decision had hit the party at the ballot box.
Asked whether the cut had been part of Labour’s poor electoral performance, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the PA news agency: “I think that has been a feature.
“I think the Prime Minister himself has said that and we’re not sugar-coating those results, they’re very challenging for us.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting told BBC Breakfast: “I know that people aren’t happy about winter fuel allowance, in lots of cases.
“We did protect it for the poorest pensioners but there are lots of people saying they disagree with it regardless.”
The Health Secretary defended the decision and other “unpopular” measures such as the hike in employers’ national insurance contributions, arguing they were necessary to raise cash to address the various “crises” across public services including the NHS and prisons.
In response to the electoral backlash, he told LBC: “We have to take that on the chin, and we are.
“In Government, we’re genuinely impatient for change.”
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said “there will not be a change to the Government’s policy” on winter fuel payments.
He added that the decision “was one that we had to take to ensure economic stability and repair the public finances following the £22 billion black hole left by the previous government”.
The spokesman also pointed to an expected £1,900 increase in the state pension over the course of the Parliament and an extension to the household support fund as ways the Government was supporting pensioners.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: “This Labour government is in a tailspin.
“After months of defending their winter fuel payment cut, they are finally now realising they might have been wrong.”
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said Labour’s refusal to change course was “a completely tone deaf response to the local elections”.
She said: “The public are rightly furious at the Government’s decision to rip vital support from millions of the most vulnerable yet ministers simply are not listening.”
