Politics: Labour says no to extra cold weather payments

Ministers have refused to adjust cold-weather payments to pensioners to allow for the wind-chill factor, saying those on low incomes already have extra help to heat their homes. But Anthony Bevins says they have laid themselves open to accusations of hypo

A government decision to reject additional cash for some of the poorest pensioners to help them get through the winter with adequate heating was roundly criticised by MPs of all parties yesterday.

Following a review of policy, to see if the wind-chill factor should be taken into account when making the pounds 8.50 cold-weather payments - currently geared to seven days at 0C - the social security minister John Denham said yesterday that there would have been a real danger that many people in less windy areas would have lost out.

He said that with a fixed limit to government spending, additional benefits for some would have meant loss for others.

But Audrey Wise, the Labour MP who led a campaign against the Tory government for wind-chill to be taken into account, told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme yesterday that the reference to budget restraint was meaningless. "Nobody knows what the expenditure actually will be this winter, or any winter," she said. "These payments are by nature emergency payments."

For the Conservatives, Iain Duncan Smith said that Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, was guilty of breathtaking hypocrisy - an identical charge to the one delivered by Margaret Ewing, of the Scottish Nationalist Party.

"In Opposition," Mr Duncan Smith said, "Harriet Harman repeatedly tried to score political points over the plight of the elderly during the winter. She raised fears and expectations. In government, [she] has changed her tune."

David Rendel, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, pointed out that a dozen MPs who were now government ministers had been among 150 Labour MPs who had signed Ms Wise's Commons motion calling for wind-chill action last November.

"It is a false economy to scrimp and save over keeping Britain's pensioners warm during the winter," he said. "The refusal to boost cold weather payments will force elderly people into hospitals, placing an additional drain on already-scarce heath service funds."

Mr Denham said that since May, the Government had taken a number of measures to help people on low incomes to heat their homes this winter. It had cut value-added tax on domestic fuel and power bills, it had abolished the gas levy, and falling fuel prices would amount, on average, to the equivalent of three cold-weather payments for old people

"No one will be worse-off this winter," he said, "and most ... will be better off, better able to heat their homes this winter because of the measures we have taken."