Readers letters| Loss of Winter Fuel Allowance could mean difference between life and death to some of those it has been taken from

Having read that our MP Jonathan Hinder, the MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, was brought up in Downham and now lives in Clitheroe, I naturally assumed he would be acutely aware of how severe the winters could be in his constituency.

So, I was confident that when the government were finally dragged into allowing MPs to vote on retaining the Winter Fuel Allowance, he would not hesitate to vote ‘Yes.’ Such was my dismay when I learned he had voted NO that I wrote asking him to explain his decision to deny pensioners the means to keep warm. His response merely parroted the party line about making tough decisions and needing money to plug the ‘black hole’ the Chancellor had suddenly found in the nation’s finances.

I found his answers somewhat dubious, particularly the claim that Rachel Reeves only became aware of the so called’ black hole’ when she took office. As shadow chancellor, she would have had regular access to figures pertaining to the state of the economy so it was obviously a lie, made even more blatant by the fact that during the election campaign she assured us that (A) the WFA would remain in place, and (B) she said, “We’ve got the OBR now. We know things are in a pretty bad state. You don’t have to win an election to find that out.”

As for having to make tough decisions to save money, pruning the number of quangos, cutting back foreign aid and reducing the number of civil servants, they would have been tough decisions, but obviously, the government chose to pick on the most vulnerable members of society.

The changes to the Winter Fuel Allowance are expected to save a paltry £1.4 billion pounds which will make no difference whatsoever to the UK economy, but could be the difference between life and death to some of those it has been taken from.