Winter fuel cut vote will test Sir Keir Starmer’s authority
Sir Keir Starmer warned during the election campaign of the need for “tough decisions”, but carefully avoided setting out where the axe would fall.
Now it’s clear who will be losing out – starting with most pensioners losing winter fuel payments worth up to £300 – unease is bubbling under the surface.
Politics live: Number 10 not ‘softening’ winter fuel payment cut
There is no doubt the government will win Tuesday’s vote as they have a huge majority of 174.
But the number of abstentions – or MPs who cannot face voting for it – especially if they number dozens, will test the prime minister’s authority and signal whether his backbenchers have the stomach for more of these cuts.
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Over the summer, Labour MPs have seen their inboxes fill up with pensioners and their families angry that those who rely on the payments fear they will face a cold winter in hardship.
The benefit will be restricted, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in July, to those who claim pension credit, and no longer given to the 10 million people aged over 66 who don’t.
She told MPs at a meeting tonight that it was a difficult decision, and she “wasn’t immune to the arguments against it”, but that sticking to it was a question of economic credibility.
Government sources claimed she had won the argument that “‘no one likes it, but we have to do it”.
Pensioners, she said, could blame the Conservatives for leaving a financial black hole.
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Reeves defends fuel payment cuts
The problem is that 880,000 pensioners who are eligible for this top-up do not claim it, so they will lose out despite being the poorest – including some on just £13,000 a year.
The government has run a campaign aimed at increasing the uptake, but the payments will go straight away.
Campaigners – pensioners have vocal campaign groups on their side – also say the million or so people just above the threshold will also struggle.
Dozens of Labour MPs are weighing up whether they can vote for the measure, which will be a three-line whip. Some feel the £1.5bn saving will have a painful price.
MP for York Central Rachel Maskell, who told Sky News she would abstain, said the swift timing of the vote, and lack of assessment of its impact, has left many concerned – not just those on the left sceptical about Sir Keir’s leadership.
A House of Lords committee which scrutinises secondary legislation said it had been introduced without proper evidence of its impact.
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Streeting ‘not remotely happy’ about cutting winter fuel payments
A former member of the shadow cabinet, who will be reluctantly voting for the measure, told me he expected the chancellor to be forced to make changes in the run-up to the budget.
In an interview this weekend, Sir Keir stood firm, saying there would be no change in course – as well as further difficult decisions coming down the track.
He will head to Brighton in the morning in a big moment for an incoming Labour prime minister – addressing the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference.
He will be braced for criticism, with major union leaders including Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, and head of the TUC, Paul Novak, piling the pressure on and saying he should U-turn.
Sir Keir knows the cut will get through parliament and has shown he can be ruthless, having withdrawn the party whip from MPs who voted to axe the two-child benefit cap.
But Labour MPs who back the measure through gritted teeth, and feel it’s had too high a price, will be harder to win over next time.
Politics
Red Wall MPs should focus on two-child benefit cap rather than winter fuel, Harriet Harman says
Red Wall MPs should push for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted rather than a reversal of the winter fuel payment policy, Baroness Harriet Harman has said.
Baroness Harman, the former Labour Party chair, told Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that this would hand the group a “progressive win” rather than simply “protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer” over winter fuel.
Earlier this week, a number of MPs in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposted a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.
They singled out the cut to the winter fuel allowance as an issue that was raised on the doorstep and urged the government to rethink the policy, arguing doing so “isn’t weak, it takes us to a position of strength”.
Labour’s decision to means test the policy has snatched the benefit away from millions of pensioners.
But Baroness Harman said a better target for the group could be an overhaul of George Osborne’s two-child benefit cap.
The cap, announced in 2015 as part of Lord David Cameron’s austerity measures, means while parents can claim child tax credit or Universal Credit payments for their first and second child, they can’t make claims for any further children they have.
Labour faced pressure to remove the cap in the early months of government, with ministers suggesting in February that they were considering relaxing the limit.
Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby that this could be a sensible pressure point for Red Wall MPs to target.
She said: “It could be that they have a kind of progressive win, and it might not be a bad thing to do in the context of an overall strategy on child poverty.
“Let’s see whether instead of just protesting and annoying Sir Keir Starmer, they can build a bridge to a new progressive set of policies.”
Jo White, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw and a member of the Red Wall group, suggested that her party’s “connection” to a core group of voters “died” with the decision to means test the winter fuel payment for pensioners.
“We need to reset the government,” she told Electoral Dysfunction. “The biggest way to do that is by tackling issues such as winter fuel payments.
“I think we should raise the thresholds so that people perhaps who are paying a higher level of tax are the only people who are exempt from getting it.”
Pic: AP
A group of MPs in the Red Wall, thought to number about 40, met on Tuesday night following the fallout of local election results in England, which saw Labour lose the Runcorn by-election and control of Doncaster Council to Reform UK.
Following the results, Sir Keir said “we must deliver that change even more quickly – we must go even further”.
Some Labour MPs believe it amounted to ignoring voters’ concerns.
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One of the MPs who was present at the meeting told Sky News there was “lots of anger at the government’s response to the results”.
“People acknowledged the winter fuel allowance was the main issue for us on the doorstep,” they said.
“There is a lack of vision from this government.”
Another added: “Everyone was furious.”
Downing Street has ruled out a U-turn on means testing the winter fuel payment, following newspaper reports earlier this week that one might be on the cards.
A man from the US state of Virginia will spend over three decades behind bars after being convicted of sending crypto to the terrorist organization commonly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Federal Judge David Novak sentenced Mohammed Azharuddin Chhipa to 30 years and four months in prison on May 7 for sending over $185,000 to the Islamic State, the Department of Justice said on May 8.
Prosecutors said that from around October 2019 until October 2022, the 35-year-old Chhipa collected and sent money to female Islamic State members in Syria, which helped them escape prison camps and funded fighting.
The Justice Department said Chhipa would raise funds for the United Nations-designated terror organization through social media — receiving money online, or traveling hundreds of miles to accept donations in person.
He’d convert the money into crypto and send it to Turkey for it to be smuggled to Islamic State members across the border in Syria, prosecutors said.
A federal jury convicted Chhipa in December, finding him guilty on a charge of conspiracy to provide support to a terrorist organization and four charges of providing and attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization.
“This defendant directly financed ISIS in its efforts to commit vile terrorist atrocities against innocent citizens in America and abroad,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This severe sentence illustrates that if you fund terrorism, we will prosecute you and put you behind bars for decades.”
Chhipa tried to flee US during FBI probe
Prosecutors said that during the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into Chhipa, he tried to flee the country to escape prosecution and tried to hide his tracks through a series of actions seemingly aimed at confusing authorities.
According to a motion for detention filed in August, FBI agents searched Chhipa’s house on Aug. 2, 2019, and that night Chhipa drove to a bank, withdrew $1,800 from an ATM, and then went to a Taco Bell, where he paid a stranger for a ride to a relative’s house. The relative then drove him to a grocery store.
Related: US Treasury sanctions Myanmar militia group for alleged crypto scams
Three days later, prosecutors said Chhipa “purchased a series of bus tickets using variations and/or misspelling of his name and recently created email accounts.”
He then travelled from Virginia to Mexico and onto Guatemala. He then bought tickets to fly from Guatemala to Panama, then onto Germany, and then to Egypt, but an Interpol Blue Notice was issued, and he was returned to the US.
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