I know this subject has and is covered here on this site. I urge all to lobby their UK MPs to get this overturned.
I thought you may find the reply I got from my MP so please read the following. Then get your PCs out and write. It can only help.
Dear Mr Savage
Many thanks for your email to Greg Clark. I just wanted to confirm that your email has been safely received. I will of course ensure that Greg sees a copy of your email but I also wanted to let you know that Greg has recently written to the Pensions Minister, the Rt Hon Steve Webb MP, about this issue, and will certainly let you have a copy of his reply.
It is part of the pension fund we all paid into not an extra benefit per se. Fair enough, do not pay it to people living in the Caribbean but given that there are very wealthy people who are receiving it 'as matter of principle' in the UK plus the fact that parliamentarians get a generous fuel allowance that is more per month in most cases than pensioners get for the whole winter, do you honestly see a all right, can't be bothered attitude is a just principle?
Because the government has already lost a case before the European Commission on denying the same benefit rights to all its pensioner citizens no matter where they live within the EU.
This is an illegal attempt to try the same thing again and we are not having it.
If they want to make this benefit means-tested, then those who most need it will continue to benefit, but David Cameron has refused to do this. Ian Duncan Smith is now going down the same illegal path, where hiewill be challenged in The Commission and be forced to spend tax-payers money in defence of his misguided policy.
Sounds to me like a case of " I'm all right Jack". It may not be worth you fighting to get it but to others can make a difference. I know one pensioner couple who live in the UK and spend November to February in Spain should their allowance be withdrawn as well?
Could be just a matter of principal.
I spend a very large sum of money heating my property here in 33896
in the winter months...5 months or more, Sometimes it is chilly in April or May.
200 euros buys 2 nice meals in a restaurant or pays for the cats yearly jabs
at the vets.
Before I left uk I sold my restaurant and paid capitol gain tax to the uk
government if I had defied what is right and kept the money I could have
bought a very small house in the massive central.
I really do not understand this. If you live in France then why are you getting so excited about a winter fuel benefit that is paid in the UK and which amounts to very little money. I used to live in the north of Scotland and had to heat the house for eight months of the year. Here I heat it for but four. The saving is considerable and I really cannot be arsed to press for an UK entitlement. I live in France now, not in the UK ... In addition it is not much money and hardly worth the sweat of battling to achieve it.
I think what is needed here is Judicial Review. The basis of what the government has based this decision is clearly wrong in fact. The inclusion of départements d'outre mer in the Carribbean and the Indian Ocean have so skewed the mean temperature as to be laughable. Thus Italy without overseas territories but with the same climate as most countries borderinng the Med is deemed a cold country. France with Caribbean and Indian Ocean départements is regarded as as a hot country. This is clearly Sir Humphrey thought.