Tories accuse PM of leading ‘Government of secrecy’ amid winter fuel cut concern

Sir Keir Starmer was accused of leading a “Government of secrecy” over his failure to reveal estimates on potential pensioner deaths linked to winter fuel payment cuts.

Shadow Commons leader Chris Philp said millions of pensioners are “sick with worry” after Parliament gave the go-ahead to restrict the payments to those people in England and Wales in receipt of pension credit or other means-tested benefits.

Prime Minister Sir Keir and his ministers have been criticised for not publishing an impact assessment on the policy, which will reduce the number of pensioners in receipt of the up to £300 payment by 10 million, from 11.4 million to 1.5 million.

Labour has argued the move to save more than £1 billion this year is required to help respond to a “£22 billion black hole” in the public finances left by the previous Tory administration.

Speaking at business questions, Mr Philp said: “I now join the leader of the Opposition (Rishi Sunak) in urgently calling on the Government to publish the impact assessment.

“The Prime Minister said on July 8, in a speech to the civil service, that his Government would be ‘open and transparent’. So where is the openness and transparency here?

“The only impact assessment we’ve seen is the Labour Party’s own impact assessment suggesting the policy would cause 3,850 deaths.”

Labour research from 2017 claimed then Tory plans to scrap the winter fuel payment for better-off pensioners could lead to almost 4,000 additional deaths over winter.

Addressing Commons Leader Lucy Powell, Mr Philp said: “I call on the honourable lady to do the decent thing and publish that impact assessment.

“This is not so much a Government of service, as a Government of secrecy.”

Mr Philp went on to call for an urgent debate on the management of the early release scheme for prisoners, as he raised concerns about violent offenders being freed.

The Government has implemented legislation to reduce the amount of time prisoners must spend in jail before they are automatically released, from 50% of their sentence to 40%.

The move – which does not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences – is expected to result in 5,500 offenders being released in September and October.

They are expected to serve the rest of their sentence under “strict” licensing conditions in the community.

Mr Philp said: “We were promised serious violent offenders would not be released early. That promise appears to be broken. Not a Government of service, but a Government of shameful incompetence.

“It’s been 70 days since the election, it’s been a pretty terrible start to government.

“Pensioners in poverty stripped of their winter fuel allowance while at the same time there are inflation-busing pay rises for train drivers who already earn £65,000-a-year.

“Labour Party donors appointed to civil service positions and the botched release of prisoners, contrary to promises made to this House that violent offenders would not be released early.”

Labour frontbencher Ms Powell had earlier announced business for the Commons after it returns from the conference recess on October 7.

This includes three general debates and two Opposition Day Debates, along with the second readings of the Renters (Reform) Bill, Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill and the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill.

Mr Philp said the Government had also announced “extraordinarily light” business, claiming: “This Government of service seems to be taking it pretty easy.

“In fact after 70 days only 13 Bills have been introduced. I looked up the record of the previous government following the 2019 election and I discovered that in 100 days they introduced 31 new Bills.

“So (Ms Powell) has quite a lot of work to do in the next 30 days if she is going to catch up with Boris Johnson.”

Ms Powell defended the new Government’s record and pointed to the Budget Responsibility Act having already cleared Parliament.

She said: “As we grapple with the £22 billion black hole left by the party opposite, what a stark reminder it is of the importance of economic stability.”

Ms Powell added: “We seem to be developing a common theme in these exchanges – they lost the election badly because they crashed the economy, they made people worse off and they didn’t fix the foundations of this country.

“He seems to think we can just carry on as we were, but we saw that movie and it didn’t end well.”

Ms Powell also said: “We inherited the prisons on the point of collapse from the party opposite. After the riots we came within 100 places of our prisons overflowing.

“If we hadn’t acted, courts wouldn’t have been able to hold trials and the police wouldn’t have been able to make arrests. Our entire criminal justice system was on the brink of collapse.”

Ms Powell accused the Tories of having “ducked the big issues” while Labour acted, saying: “I won’t take any lectures from him about that.”