Nigel Farage on the Pensions Winter Fuel Allowance

What do the manifestos mean? Well, not very much really because Keir Starmer gave no indication at all in the run up to the election that Labour would remove the winter fuel allowance worth £200 to 300 depending on circumstances for up to 10 million pensioners in this country. Funny that’s the same Keir Starmer who said in 2022 that he feared for people’s future if this allowance was removed and indeed it’s true that cold kills.

Labour themselves thought up to 4,000 people every winter would die if this was removed, so they’re going to do it, they’re not going to back off, I guess they have to fund the public sector pay rises somehow. Funny they say they found a £22 billion black hole folks, that is baloney.

I’ll tell you how big the black hole is it’s £2.7 trillion yes, that is now the size of our accumulated national debt, so sure we have problems, we’ve got a budget coming at the end of October the government has to try to encourage growth but it can’t cause it itself. The reason I’m so opposed to removing this allowance is because already our pensioners, indeed the rest of us and not just us domestically but our businesses, our manufacturing Industries, we have the most expensive energy in Europe and we pay way more than the Americans.

Our energy bills are set to soar over the course of the next 10 years not go down as we were promised during the election campaign that I can promise you is wrong and given just how much of their income people, particular those on fixed incomes, pensioners many of them by the way this year will be dragged into paying tax which seems almost incredible for people not on very big incomes. For that reason, above all, the cost of energy, the fact it is going to go up is why I feel so strongly that the winter fuel allowances should not be removed.

We kind of insist on not producing our own natural gas, we insist on not producing as much oil as we consume, we insist on not producing coal in this country which is needed for proper steel manufacturer and the fact we’ve cut our carbon emissions and gone for renewables faster than anywhere else in the world folks, that’s why our energy is so expensive and just a few days ago there was a big auction for wind farm developments, offshore and onshore, huge uptake, nearly all by the way from foreign companies, but a huge uptake because the price the Ed Miliband has agreed is way above current market prices.

Our energy bills are set to soar over the course of the next 10 years not go down as we were promised during the election campaign that I can promise you is wrong and given just how much of their income people, particular those on fixed incomes, pensioners many of them by the way this year will be dragged into paying tax which seems almost incredible for people not on very big incomes. For that reason, above all, the cost of energy, the fact it is going to go up is why I feel so strongly that the winter fuel allowances should not be removed.