Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out a U-turn on his government’s decision to strip the winter fuel payment from millions of pensioners.
Labour faced a backlash to the move at last week’s disastrous local elections, with backbenchers complaining that it had played a decisive role in the party losing one of its safest parliamentary seats as well as 187 councillors.
But the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “There will not be a change to the government’s policy.”
They added that the decision “was one that we had to take to ensure economic stability and repair the public finances following the £22bn black hole left by the previous government”.
Earlier, Wes Streeting had failed to rule out a reversal of the policy, while admitting it was a factor in Labour’s dismal local election results.
However, the health secretary stood by the prime minister’s original decision to push through the cut, arguing that the money saved had been invested in the NHS and in improving Britain’s state schools.
Mr Streeting told Sky News that he was “not aware of those discussions if they’re taking place” and refused to speculate on future policy changes. However, he underlined that the government “is always listening and always looking at how the policies that we’re enacting make a difference”.
The issue came up on the doorstep for Labour during the campaign for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election – which was won by Reform, overturning a Labour majority of 14,000 – as well as the council elections, where Labour lost two-thirds of its seats, only returning 99 councillors.
Mr Streeting claimed that as health secretary he “wouldn’t be close to those sorts of discussions [about adjusting the income threshold for the winter fuel allowance] at this stage, ahead of the spending review and the Budget later this year as well”.
He added: “But what I do want to reassure people [about] is that, in terms of last Thursday’s local election results, we have noticed – we have got the message.”
But defending the policy, he said that Labour has “had to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the country out of the hole it was left in”.
And, accusing the Conservatives of leaving the NHS in chaos, prisons crumbling and a lack of police on the streets, he said that “even if people disagree with some of the individual decisions we have taken, I don’t think anyone would disagree that we are dealing with a lot”.
Labour’s decision to means-test the payment, which affected around 10 million pensioners, was seen as one of the biggest factors in a bruising set of local elections.
It was announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves shortly after the 2024 election, when she claimed she had found a £22bn black hole in the UK finances. The policy is expected to save the government around £1.5bn a year, but will push more than 100,000 pensioners into poverty.
The change is more widely known about than any of Labour’s other policies, while around two-thirds of voters dislike the policy.
Luke Tryl, executive director of polling organisation More In Common, has described it as Labour’s “original sin” and said it had a major impact on the party’s disastrous performance last week.
And on Monday, the director of the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank warned that Sir Keir had become “known around the world” for the winter fuel cut.
Paul Johnson told Times Radio: “I was talking to the head of an international insurance company recently, who said that the one thing everyone around the world knows about this government is that it’s taking money away from helping [with] the cost of fuel for pensioners.
“So it’s one of those things that actually, from a sort of fiscal point of view, is pretty small, but has turned out, I think, to be much bigger from a political and reputational point of view than the government expected.”
Reports overnight suggested that Downing Street was rethinking the cut amid fears that it could cost Labour the next general election, with officials considering raising the threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the allowance.
“The winter fuel cut has become totemic, and talks to us being on the wrong side of working people. We need to show that’s not the case,” a Downing Street source told The Guardian.
It comes after a slew of Labour backbenchers publicly called for a reversal of the cut as the local election results came in on Friday.
One of Labour’s re-elected mayors hit out at Sir Keir, while a group of left-wing MPs demanded a change of course from the PM.
Ros Jones, who was narrowly re-elected as mayor of Doncaster, beating the Reform candidate by just under 700 votes, told the BBC: “I wrote as soon as the winter fuel allowance was actually mooted, and I said it was wrong, and therefore I stepped in immediately and used our household support fund to ensure no one in Doncaster went cold during the winter.”
Left-wing Labour MP Kim Johnson was among a group of backbenchers who warned that Sir Keir’s current approach is leaving the door open to Reform UK and the far right.
“Voters want change – and if we don’t offer it with bold, hopeful policies that rebuild trust, the far right will,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Sir Keir has defended the “tough decisions” he has taken in power, including the winter fuel cut, arguing that Labour “inherited a broken economy”.
He added: “Maybe other prime ministers would have walked past that, pretended it wasn’t there ... I took the choice to make sure our economy was stable.”
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