Unite is pushing ahead with legal action against the government in a bid to overturn winter fuel cuts for millions of pensioners.
Unite claims the government did not follow correct procedure and has instructed lawyers who are asking the High Court for an urgent judicial review of the government’s decision to restrict payments to poorer pensioners.
The policy, announced in July, has attracted criticism, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves saying it was intended to help plug a £22bn hole in public finances.
Sharon Graham, Unite’s General Secretary, told the BBC “picking the pockets of pensioners is wrong at every level”.
An estimated 10 million pensioners will lose the winter fuel payment, worth between £100 and £300. The benefit will still be paid to those who receive pension credit or other means-tested help.
Among those are 200,000 Unite members, and the union says it is acting on behalf retired members struggling to get by.
Many of them have modest private pensions which makes them ineligible for Pension Credit – and therefore ineligible for winter fuel payments – Unite said.
Juliet Jeater is one of them is one of 11 Unite members who have joined union in the legal action.
She told the BBC she believed the pension credit threshold was too low and to qualify for it “you truly have to be on the breadline”.
Jeater, a retired teacher in her 70 who lives in a Northamptonshire village, said she needed the winter fuel payment to pay for heating her cottage.
In the recent cold snap, she was given scrap wood from a neighbour, who is a scaffolder, to heat her home.
A former Labour member, Jeater said she was surprised to find herself better off under the last Conservative government.
She said: “I feel quite angry about what has happened.
“Last year when we had a Conservative government, I actually received five hundred pounds, which was the winter fuel allowance plus a cost-of-living payment.
“This year I get nothing.”
Jeater is now a Green Party activist.
Unite claimed that the government should have done more to gather evidence on the impact of the cuts before announcing them.
Earlier this month, Unite threatened to take legal action unless the government cancelled the cuts or produced more evidence for them.
The government did undertake a limited “equality analysis” and told the parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee that 50,000 people could fall into relative poverty next year as a result of the withdrawal of payments – though this could be mitigated by an increased take-up of Pension Credit.
But the union says this falls short of a full impact assessment which would also take in to account the effect on older people’s health.
Ms Graham told the BBC the government ‘has brought something in without knowing what it is going to cost in terms of illness, what it is going to cost in terms of death.’
Asked why she was backing potentially costly legal action, she said: ‘”hat I want is for the courts to do is hear this quickly and to say if the proper impact assessment wasn’t done then actually the government needs to go back to the beginning and in the interim, they need to pay the winter fuel allowance for this year’
Otherwise, she argued that “‘people will not forgive Labour’s decision – picking the pockets of pensioners is wrong at every level”.
“This issue is not going away,” Ms Graham said.
The union has also claimed that the independent Social Security Advisory Committee should have been consulted in advance.
But in a letter to that committee, the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said she had to act urgently to bring in the necessary regulations before winter, and to make in-year savings in government expenditure.
The government has said it cannot comment on ongoing legal action.
But a spokesman said that the government was committed to supporting pensioners and that “millions would see their state pension rise by up to £1,900 in this parliament through the Triple Lock”.
Some would benefit too from the £150 warm home discount.
More than a million pensioners would still receive the winter fuel payment, and applications for Pension Credit had increased significantly, the spokesman added.
There is no guarantee that taking legal action will stop the cuts.
Government sources seem confident that the policy will not be reversed in the courts.
But Unite’s action once again highlights the controversy over the cuts as winter approaches.
Pressure on the government at Westminster is likely to mount further if the Scottish government were to decide to mitigate the cuts in next week’s budget.
And the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee is to undertake an inquiry into pensioner poverty – partly prompted by the cuts – in January
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