The prime minister has insisted it “makes sense” to cut winter fuel payments to millions of pensioners, as he was pressed on the change in a series of BBC local radio interviews in Downing Street.
Sir Keir Starmer was repeatedly asked why he was “picking a fight” with pensioners, and about warnings that more would fall into poverty as a result and that some would die.
He said it was important to protect pensioners who most needed the allowance, but many did not need it because they were “relatively wealthy”.
He argued the government’s finances were “really, really difficult” and the government had to prioritise delivering for the NHS, schools and other public services used by pensioners.
He urged people who were eligible for pension credit to take it up, saying it would guarantee they continued to receive the winter fuel allowance.
He told Radio WM there were “lots of decisions” made in the Budget which he would have preferred “not to have had to make”.
“But when you inherit a broken economy, when you then find out there was £22bn which doesn’t appear on the books, and you’d need to balance the books, very, very difficult decisions have to be made,” he added.
Sir Keir was also pressed on farmers’ unhappiness about changes to inheritance tax, the rise in energy bills and the continuing increase in migrants arriving in small boats from across the English Channel.
Asked why he thought he would be succeed in reducing the number of small boat crossings when previous prime ministers had failed to do so, he said he was focusing on “working with other countries on law enforcement to take down the gangs that are running this trade”.