The Winter Fuel payment goes to all pensioners because the State pension is not enough to live on, yet largely all UK pensioners have paid in for it through their 30, 40, and 50 year working lives.

**ivanhoe** Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:57 pm

The Winter Fuel payment goes to all pensioners because the State pension is not enough to live on, yet largely all UK pensioners have paid in for it through their 30, 40, and 50 year working lives.
The Winter Fuel payment goes to all pensioners because the State pension is not enough to live on, yet largely all UK pensioners have paid in for it through their 30, 40, and 50 year working lives.
Last winter over 36,700 pensioners in the UK died of cold-related illnesses, a death rate of 13 pensioners each hour in what was a very harsh winter. In the spending review Chancellor George Osborne did not budget to keep up the last Government’s top- up for the universal winter fuel allowance, effectively reducing the annual payments from £250 (£125 each if you are a couple living together) to £200 for people 60 and over, and from £400 to £300 for pensioners 80 and over. Currently winter fuel allowances cost the tax payer £2.7bn each year.
Winter pensioner deaths reached thirteen an hour

In 2009 the payments went to 12.68 million people in 9.17 million households; 42 per cent received the £125 allowance. Parliamentary questions after the review revealed that the allowance is also available to 65,000 ex-pats living across Europe, and 450,000 higher rate tax payers, including those paying 50 per cent income tax). Two thirds of the House of Lords members received winter fuel allowances last year.