David Cameron is to make a late intervention to block the plans of the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, to cut emergency cold-weather payments worth £25 a week to £8.50. The payments go to pensioners and less well-off people to compensate for high fuel bills during exceptionally cold weather periods.
In a sign of the confusion surrounding the last-minute haggling before next Wednesday's spending review, one part of Whitehall said there was no possibility of retaining cold-weather payments at £25 a week, saying the payments had been a pre-election bribe by Gordon Brown for which he knew there was no money. The former prime minister had raised the payment from £8.50 a week to £25 a week in the last two years. However a government source said: "David will not want to see cold-weather payments like these cut back down to £8.50 for some of the most poor and vulnerable in society. He will make sure this does not happen."
A statutory instrument on the payments for this winter, introduced into the Commons on Monday, failed to include the clause specifically raising the weekly payment to £25, so in effect cutting the payment to £8.50. The payments are handed out if the outside temperature drops to 0C or below for seven consecutive days. The money goes to those who qualify for pension credit or income support. The scheme is due to come into force on 1 November. Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North, said tonight: "The prime minister has to come clean whether he is really willing to let four million of the poorest pensioners have their payments cut by two-thirds. Would that be fair?"
Other Whitehall sources said the decision on cold-weather payments was wrapped up in a wider review of welfare due to be announced next week. There are suggestions that ministers are reviewing the separate tax-free winter fuel payments, which, at the moment, are given to most people aged over 60. The payments, worth £250 a year, cost a total of £2.7bn. The qualifying age for these payments is already due to rise to 65 by 2020, in line with an increase in the pensionable age.
Cameron refused to say at prime minister's questions whether he was planning to change the qualifying criteria for these payments in the spending review. But some Cabinet ministers have said that as these are universal payments, paid to the rich as well as poor, they do little to tackle fuel poverty.
