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Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday survived a significant rebellion over his government’s contentious policy of axing £1.5bn in winter fuel payments for 10mn UK pensioners.
The government won a vote to back the policy to limit the subsidy, worth up to £300, by 348 votes to 228, even though many Labour MPs expressed serious disquiet over the move and backed it through gritted teeth.
More than 50 of Labour’s 404 MPs did not vote for the measure, some deliberately abstaining in protest and some absent from the House of Commons for other reasons.
A senior Labour official insisted that “only a dozen of the MPs who were absent for today’s vote were not authorised”.
Labour whips were said by senior party figures to be taking a “relatively lenient” view against MPs who abstained but said that those who voted against the policy could be suspended.
Veteran left-wing MP Jon Trickett was the sole Labour MP to vote against the policy.
Mel Stride, Conservative work and pensions spokesman, told Labour MPs during the Commons debate on the policy: “Look to your conscience. These measures, you know in your heart that these measures are wrong.”
Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves offered no last-minute proposals for new measures to mitigate the impact of the Labour government’s policy to means test winter fuel payments, which are currently universal.
A few MPs had suggested adapting the means-testing mechanism to ensure poorer pensioners who do not receive welfare benefits did not suffer.
In July, Starmer suspended seven MPs who voted against Labour’s plans to retain the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap in July. Five of those MPs voted against the government again on Tuesday, including former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
McDonnell said during the debate that “when an issue like this has been so heavily whipped it’s very difficult and I haven’t got the eloquence to persuade people to vote another way”.
But McDonnell said he had no choice but to vote in favour of the Tories’ motion calling for the policy to be scrapped, saying: “I was not elected to impoverish my constituents.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham called on the government to consider softening the cut to the winter fuel allowance, which will now only be paid to those receiving pension credit.
Burnham, a former Labour cabinet minister, said there was a “case” for reforming the payment but called on ministers not to rule out a “tapered” approach to its withdrawal.
Pensioners are often “reluctant” to apply for pension credit, he said, while the income threshold at which people become eligible for it “is pretty low anyway”. The threshold is £332.95 a week for couples.
About 10mn pensioners will lose the winter fuel payment, which is currently worth up to £300 for all households with someone aged 80 or over and £200 when the recipient is under 80.
The charity Age UK has said the policy will hit 2.5mn pensioners who are struggling financially.
About 1.5mn pensioners will retain the winter fuel payment.
The policy of means testing the payments comes as the state pension is expected to rise by £460 from April 2025 given official data for wage growth, which the state pension is benchmarked against.
Reeves on Monday night urged Labour MPs to show unity in defending the “difficult decisions” she said she had to take to put the public finances back on a sound footing.
“We stand, we lead and we govern together,” she said.
There has been widespread discomfort within Labour that one of Reeves’s first “difficult decisions” hit pensioners, some of them living near the poverty line.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union, which represents transport workers, earlier called on the government to change track on its cuts to the winter fuel allowance.
He added that the government was being “harsh” in the way it was whipping its own MPs to back the measure.
“If you can’t allow debate within the party and you can’t allow ideas to be expressed then you’re running a bit of a dictatorship,” he said.
