Turning the Screw

Remember Morton’s Fork; political chicanery, fifteenth-century style, from Henry VII’s Chancellor - “You’re spending lavishly so you can clearly afford to pay more tax to the King” or, “You’re spending next to nothing so you can clearly afford etc.”? Our modern-day equivalent, for the nearly-poor over 65s at least, is Reeves’ Ratchet Reversal. 

It goes something like this: 

• The cost of living rises and finances are tight, then the pension goes up to match and you can balance the books once more. 

• The cost of living rises further, the pension rises again to match. 

• The cost of living rises yet further but, at this point, Reeves steps in: “You have a pension increase due soon, so you clearly don’t need any help with your heating costs: no WFA for you this year!

 …at which point the whole process grinds to a shuddering halt as cold weather approaches and, with it, some of the highest household energy costs in the world; all well and good if you are reasonably well-off or had plenty of warning to prepare for the loss of the expected payment, less so if you are living on £221.20 a week and it is sprung on you after the nights have already started drawing in.

Never mind that the Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be effectively double-counting (which is not reassuring!) and that the higher pension rate was calculated based on other increases in the cost of living already in effect or, for that matter, that the ‘shopping basket’ used to calculate CPI contains many things pensioners wouldn’t necessarily want or need and their real-terms percentage increase may be higher; theirs are the broad shoulders to be burdened with the Herculean tasks of filling the black hole in the public purse, saving the NHS and preventing a run on the pound. 

It’s a poor return for the elderly without private or company pensions who have paid a working lifetime’s worth of NI in the firm belief (backed, for some, by government assurances) that the government would look after them with dignity in their old age - or, for that matter, the widows now in their eighties and nineties who gave up work to raise their families. While the Left bandy about the oft-repeated - and irrelevant - fallacy that a quarter of pensioners are millionaires, some two million or more receive nothing but the state pension; too much now to qualify for the WFA but little enough for the loss of an expected £200 to be a significant blow.

With La Niña predicted to bring us a cold start to the winter with strong northerly winds and and possible early snowfall, those clever little display units sitting on the shelves up and down the country, intended to placate the environmental lobby by making consumers aware of their energy consumption, will doubtless become a constant source of anxiety to the impoverished elderly as they show the pounds and pence of fuel debt inexorably clocking up minute by minute. 

A report commissioned by Labour* a few years ago produced an estimated figure of 3870 extra deaths if the payment were limited to those on pension credit. While it is to be hoped that families, charities and the wider community will do what they can for those in need - though it’s shocking that this should be necessary in a supposedly civilised country - many lone and isolated individuals will still slip through the net, spending their last days in fear and despair before finally succumbing to the cold. 

With winter fast approaching, it won’t be long before our hospitals (and morgues) start to deal with the consequences of pensioners who are afraid to turn on their central heating. The government will doubtless disclaim all responsibility and say it is a matter of choice - after all, who, in today’s easy credit society, would understand an older generation’s visceral aversion to going into debt? - but it remains to be seen what the effect on the public will be once the deaths start mounting up.

According to a 15th Century chronicler, Morton ‘lyved not withoute the greate Disdayne and greate Haterede of the Commons of thys Lande’; from the evidence of the past few months, Reeves looks very much on course to be doing the same.

*by the Resolution Foundation under CEO Torsten Bell; he is now a Labour MP and PPS to the Cabinet office, so presumably the party still stands by its findings.