Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Neil O'Brien slammed the new Labour Government's decision to slash the Winter Fuel Payment to pensioners.
The Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston MP said: "I am leading the charge against Labour’s decision to cut the Winter Fuel Payment. During the 2024 election, Labour said there were ‘no plans to change’ the Winter Fuel Payment. In fact during the 2017 election Labour said that means testing the Winter Fuel Payment would lead to nearly 4,000 extra pensioner deaths. But straight after the election they took them away. Ten million pensioners are losing them benefit including 1.6 million who are below the government’s own poverty line. I have been doing research on this and pressing the government change their mind.
"I will fight moves by Labour to make the cost of living challenge worse by jacking up taxes on working people.
"To help with the cost of living under the last Conservative government we froze fuel duty and cut the rate of national insurance by 4p in the pound, which has saved the average worker about £900 a year. I support the triple lock on the state pension, which will I will press the government to maintain. The current state pension is £169.50 a week, compared to £144.40 a week in 2010 (in today's money), so the increases under the triple lock made those on the basic state pension about £1,300 a year better off, even after inflation.
"Under the last Conservative government Britain's economy grew faster than Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and many other countries. Our plan to cut price increases worked: inflation came down from 11% in 2022 to just over 2%.
"Because we have focused tax cuts on those who earn the least, the average earner in the UK now has the lowest personal tax rate since 1975: a lower rate than in America, France or Germany. But I will continue to press ministers to increase the income tax personal allowance to take more working people and more pensioners out of paying tax."
Neil has also published some of his own research on estimates of how many people will lose the payment in constituencies across the country, because the Government is refusing to do so.
