Political opinion: Cllr Duncan Crow: Defending the indefensible on the Winter Fuel Allowance

We saw last week one of the first major votes of this new parliament, a vote tabled by the Conservatives that was an attempt to stop Labour’s decision to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from over 10 million pensioners. Unfortunately, Labour having a huge 174 seat majority in the House of Commons means they can do pretty much whatever they like.

Labour wants to fill the black hole in the public finances that they created with their inflation-busting pay awards to their trade union paymasters. Political choices are being made and I believe this is the wrong choice. In a democracy, politicians can and do disagree with each other and they can change their minds, but sometimes a chain of events can only lead to very negative conclusions.

For example, on 10 September, Crawley’s Labour MP voted against the Conservative's proposal to stop the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance, which was the Labour party line. What sits even more badly than the vote itself, is that on 30 September last year, Crawley’s MP while as the Labour candidate posted the following on social media with a link to a petition: “Last year 5,000 people died from living in a cold and damp home. Now Rishi Sunak could be considering scrapping the Winter Fuel Allowance. Join me and sign the petition telling him to keep this crucial lifeline for pensioners!”

There were, of course, no plans for this to happen. Labour’s subsequent general election campaign that saw the election of a record number of Labour MPs, had a core theme about the cost of living and of making people better off. Last week’s vote instantly goes against this core general election theme that Labour campaigned on.

It gets worse. As subsequently reported in the national press, when defending how he voted, Crawley’s Labour MP wrote on Twitter that if pensioners choose not to put the heating on this winter after losing their Winter Fuel Payments then "that's their choice".

The harsh reality is the only choice being made is the political choice made by the Labour government and their MPs.