I must return once again to the subject of the Winter Fuel Payment. It looks as if the Government, and Iain Duncan Smith in particular, is squaring up to wipe out any benefits which British pensioners receive, just because they chose to live in another country.
On 1st November a Briefing Note was placed in the Library of the House of Commons.
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06019/winter-fuel-payments-update
It is very revealing about the way in which the Government has gone about trying to find any way in which the WFP could be blocked. Here are one or two selected extracts which I think illustrate Government’s attitude.
- …. recently, a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding payment of Incapacity Benefit to people living abroad has had implications for the rules for other benefits, including the Winter Fuel Payment. It is now possible that people living in the EEA or Switzerland may be entitled to Winter Fuel Payment even if they did not acquire it first in the UK, provided they have a “genuine and sufficient link” with the UK and satisfy the other entitlement conditions.
- In July 2012 the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, issued the following statement: We will fight these ridiculous EU rules. The Winter Fuel Payment is about helping British pensioners with heating costs and it is ludicrous that we could have to pay more pensioners living in hot countries. We will protect taxpayers’ money and bring in temperature criteria so payments can only be made to British pensioners living in cold climates.
- From 2015-16 winter fuel payments will no longer be payable to individuals in countries where the average winter temperature is warmer than the warmest region of the UK (South-West England). The Government has worked with the Met Office to analyse comparable winter temperature data across all EEA countries. The Met Office used recognised administrative regions for each country. For France this was the 27 regions, including French Guyana, Guadeloupe, La Reunion, Martinique and Mayotte. It does not include the French overseas territories, which are not part of the EEA.
And then a quote from a Government response to a Freedom of Information request:
-
DWP commissioned the Met Office to produce a report which shows the average winter
temperature data for each European Union country and region of that country.
The Met Office used data sets of the monthly mean air temperature (for the reference period
1961-1990) for land areas of the globe, from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of
East Anglia.
I have been in touch with the Climatic Research Unit and this is their response:
So, it looks more and more as if the DWP are prepared to go to any lengths to prove their point!
I have studied the data sets from which the DWP have taken their comparative temperatures for establishing the hot/cold country tests. France is quite definitely below the yardstick measurement they are using of 5.6⁰C for SW England. On the other hand if you add in the French Overseas Departments then the situation changes. But there is something very odd indeed - when announcing that France was a ‘hot’ country, the DWP made Italy a ‘cold’ country, and yet the very figures they are using as their source clearly show that Italy is in fact ‘hot’!!
|
Country
|
Mean Temperatures Nov-Mar from the CRU datasets ⁰C
|
UK Yardstick of the SW of England
Also Nov-Mar ⁰C
|
|
France
|
5.08
|
|
|
Greece
|
9.00
|
|
|
Italy
|
7.54
|
|
|
Portugal
|
10.40
|
|
|
Spain
|
7.58
|
|
|
United Kingdom
|
4.28
|
5.60
|
Well done Roger, I will pass these figures on to my MP. Interestingly I heard on the radio that Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister is a member of Christians at Westminster. How he manages to hold his position and square the shenanigans of IDS with his conscience I find difficult to understand.
Oh well, out with the boot polish and let's all daub our faces... IDS would love that, then he could say "Told you so..." and be quoted in the Daily Wail.
Quite ridiculous the whole thing. It's mostly about whipping up the rabble about "immigration" and people from abroad and that now includes us!
Negligible given the pensioner population of the UK in proportion to the scroungers we all are living in tropical foreign parts of northern Europe.
V interesting! Did you see the % of those in the EU?
Just a bitter, failed, ex-would-be Conservative prime minister - kicking the cat!
Been doing more research into WFP. IDS bangs on and on and about the increase in claimants from EEA countries particularly from Ireland, Spain and France. He's right about the rise, however, I suspect he has contributed to that rise in a large measure by banging on and encouraging the Daily Mail to headline it!
However, I came across some interesting reading. The IFS published a report covering DWP expenditures in 2011/2012. The report shows WFP was just 1.07% of the total DWP spend!
When I looked at the DWP research, there were 12,686,130 claimants in 2011/2012 and 12,683,160 in 2012/2013!!!
Well, well what is all the fuss about?
Also Italy has no tropical islands to throw into the mix!
Twitter was priced at 26 and went up to 44 the same day; the flotation was for 30ish % of the total. The market price for the remainder is now clearer. Just about exactly the same as Royal Mail.
Facebook floated at 44ish and went down over the next some weeks to about 25, then rose again to above the flotation price.
It's not correct to declare UK government are specially stupid, apparently everybody gets this wrong.
When you see the programme Saints and Sinners on the tv, you see both sides of the coin. How people manage to get Way with so e of these scams for so long and why they make it so difficult for people who are genuinely in need, I fail to understand.
Thought it was Uganda mate! Mind you that dates me!
Roger, me too, OK only in receipt one winter but already in the system, very healthy and not actually earning too badly at the time.
Between the devil and deep blue sea there. I am now 65 but have young children. Last year I applied for child benefit. Had to be me because OH is not UK. CAF told me I ought to do that. It was refused, so I showed CAF the letter refusing it and we are soon going to receive it back dated here. The reason was that because I am self-employed (AE) and need to remain so even when receiving my pension (absolute minimum at that), I am presumed to be able to earn a sufficient income not to require CB. The fact that my health prevents me from travelling and also a general shortage of work in my area was of no interest to them since I am neither claiming sickness nor unemployment benefits there. CAF were sympathetic and are working out between two and three years of back payment after we had a meeting with them last week.
The fact I have evidence that I cannot work and have had little income for two years was entirely disregarded. Do I feel I ought to donate my £200 to charity or spend it on wine? No! But spend it on wood, sure thing. As for the CB, well do people wonder why I do not even wish to pop back for the occasional visit? I almost feel they would have a go at me for dirtying their wonderful country with the French dirt on my shoe soles and reduce what I get accordingly....
No doubt one of the advisers with a background in wallpaper design or the likes will come up with the perfect scheme for actually reducing pensions because wine is 6p cheaper a bottle in Botswana, etc....
The Government undersold Royal Mail at the flotation by more than £1 billion leaving the UK tax payer short. The cost of paying expat pensioners the £30 million is an absolute trifle by comparison. In addition DWP lost well over £100 million on a useless computer system. Apart from threatening to reduce medical benefit entitlement to expat pensioners living in Europe one wonders what further scheme they will dream up to screw us.
It's not that difficult to impose a ceiling of income above which WFP would not be payable. That is done ordinarily now for Child Benefit payable to eligible UK citizens whether they be in the UK or indeed Europe, but it depends to a degree on the honesty of most tax payers. The ceiling for Child Benefit is £50k income for the best paid parent. Some are not convinced that any pensioner should be excluded, whatever the income level. Of course pensioners could decide to give it to charity, whilst there may be some who will spend it on wine, but it wouldn't go very far on drugs! You need to be earning as much as a bank chairman for that.
Since IDS is banging on about the number of new claimants, stoked up by the Daily Mail who started the campaign against us at the beginning of the year, surely it is possible to devise something which does not penalise unnecessarily. As you have to 'claim' the WFP, it must surely be possible to include a gross income test for all new applicants, and announce that anyone above the limit will be refused. If the income level is set low enough new claimants will hesitate before risking all to claim £200 particularly if they are not declaring every last penny of their income! I qualified before coming to France and so resent it being removed particularly when I'm sure they have manipulated the figures for France!