Does the Labour party hate pensioners? That is the only conclusion I can draw from their first few months in government.
At every available opportunity Labour ministers have given them a kicking.
Sadly, this looks to be just the tip of the iceberg in the apparent fight against “codgers”, in the words of one of Labour’s tax advisers.
Pensioners who have worked hard all their lives deserve to live in dignity in retirement.
It goes to the core of who we are as a nation, where we are taught from a young age to respect our elders. Clearly this is a lesson Labour MPs have skipped.
As well as the clear ethical duty owed to pensioners who helped build this country, there is a practical reason they need support.
Pensioners cannot earn more money. They can’t work another job or more hours. They are dependent on their pension.
That is why I am so proud of our strong track record of supporting pensioners.
Because of the choices we took, 200,000 pensioners have been lifted out of poverty since 2010.
The state pension has risen by £3,700 since 2010. And the triple lock has meant pensioners never lose out when prices rise, as we saw drastically after the war in Ukraine. This means they can live in dignity, security and comfort.
But now, different choices are being made. Pensioners have been shoved to the back of the queue
by sharp-elbowed Lefties.
The Winter Fuel Payment has been ripped from vulnerable pensioners. This means, even though the energy price cap has risen
this winter, pensioners on around £11,500 a year will lose hundreds of pounds of vital support.
This double whammy will crush vulnerable pensioners across the country, forcing many to make the impossible choice between heating and eating.
Worse still, the Government did not even carry out a full impact assessment. They concealed this crucial information from MPs before they forced them to vote on this programme of state-sponsored starvation. Since then, they have admitted that of the 1.4 million pensioners who were in absolute poverty, a mere 200,000 received pension credit.
This raises the horrifying possibility that the majority of the nation’s poorest retirees won’t qualify for winter fuel payments.
That is just not right.
Labour ministers claimed time and again during the election, when they needed pensioners to vote for them, that there were “no plans” to change their benefits.
Why then, have they so quickly enacted a change that will negatively affect millions of pensioners within weeks of walking into Downing Street? Because they were planning it all along.
The Prime Minister claimed he has no choice but to pick the pockets of pensioners, and weakly points the finger at the previous administration to excuse his decisions. But this won’t wash.
If there was not enough money for pensioners, then where has the money come from to give train drivers, already on £65,000 a year, a bumper pay rise? Or where has the money come from to save 66,000 civil service jobs that we had planned to cut? Or where has the money come from to spend £8.3billion on an energy company that won’t produce any energy?
These are all political choices.
Whether it comes to union paymasters, public sector pals or swelling the state, pensioners come a distant second every single time.
In the run up to the “painful” budget to come, removing other benefits for pensioners have been tentatively floated.
Along with my Conservative colleagues, I will stand strong against Labour’s war on pensioners. It’s the right thing to do.
If you can detect a theme running through all of this, you could be forgiven for thinking Labour hates pensioners. If disrespecting pensioners at every available opportunity is their idea of change, you can count me out.
