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There has been no impact assessment of how the decision to strip millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments will affect them, Keir Starmer has said.
The prime minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves decided to means-test the payments, worth up to £300, to help fill a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances.
Pressed on whether an impact assessment would be published, Sir Keir told reporters travelling with him to Washington DC: “There isn’t a report on my desk which somehow we’re not showing, that I’m not showing, as simple as that.”
And he added the government was not legally required to produce one.
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A Downing Street spokeswoman said some statistical work had been done, but nothing on what impact the change might have on vulnerable pensioners.
There was a legal duty to consider the “equality implications” of any policy development and “that happened in the usual way to assess the proportion of protected characteristics, such as age and gender who claim winter fuel payments”, the spokeswoman added.
Asked whether an assessment should have been done to work out whether elderly people might be harmed as a result of the change, the spokeswoman said: “The government will be ensuring that those who are most vulnerable and should be receiving support are receiving it, and that’s why there is a huge effort to try and convert people onto pension credit.
“And also, we want people to be applying for the wider support, which is also there for the most vulnerable.”
The government has been…
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