Make the super-rich pay
Alistair Tice, Yorkshire Socialist Party member, delivered a speech presenting a petition to Sheffield City Council – run by an unofficial coalition of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens – on 6 November. It called on the council to fund Winter Fuel Payments for pensioners in the city.
Despite the new Labour government saying that there will be no return to austerity, their cold-hearted decision to cut the winter fuel allowance of up to £300 to nearly 10 million pensioners in Britain is a callous austerity policy.
Pensioners in Britain already get the lowest state pension in western Europe, and with the government allowing the gas and electricity prices charged by the privatised energy companies to go up by another 10%, many pensioners really will face the choice of heating or eating this winter.
These cuts to the winter fuel allowance will only ‘save’ £1.5 billion, yet if all the pensioners eligible for Pension Credit actually claimed it, it will cost the government £2.2 billion! So why are they doing it, other than for Starmer and Reeves to prove to the establishment and the money markets that they will make the ‘tough decisions’ and ‘hard choices’? Tough and hard on pensioners that is!
I’ve heard some Labour councillors say: “We shouldn’t be paying it to rich pensioners who don’t need it.” To which I say: if you’re so bothered about the rich getting what they don’t deserve or need, why doesn’t your Labour government take the wealth off the super-rich, like the 50 richest families in the UK who own £500 billion between them, as much as the poorest 50% of the population?
An estimated 75,000 pensioners in Sheffield are affected by this cut. This petition is calling on Sheffield City Council to use and, if necessary, extend its Household Support Fund or similar funds, to restore the £200 or £300 to those pensioners who’ve lost it.
To my knowledge, a few councils have already announced such schemes, including Barnsley, and now Rotherham has just announced a winter hardship fund. So it can be done.
Don’t say you haven’t the money. Despite all the Con-Dem and Tory government austerity cuts, Sheffield City Council still has £500 million in reserves.
If you really want to protect the people of Sheffield like you say you do, then you will make the ‘hard choice’ of refusing to carry out any more government cutbacks and can start by restoring the winter fuel allowance.
The Socialist Party fights for:
- Councils to set needs-based, no-cuts budgets. Build a mass working-class movement, bringing together trade unions and communities to demand the funding needed from the new Labour government
- If councillors aren’t prepared to fight for us, then we need ones who will! Build a new mass workers’ party that fights in our interests against the bosses
- Make the super-rich pay. Take wealth and resources out of the hands of the big-business bosses and put it into the hands of the working class, to run society democratically for what we need, not for profits
