Morning Line: are winter fuel allowances safe?

Pensioners that don't even pay fuel bills get the WFA surely that cannot be right! Pensioners living overseas also get it???

Surely means testing all benifits are the most logical way rather than having universal benefits!

My wife and I are considered high net worth individuals and yet we receive the fuel allowance.

Is Hamish correct that pensioners who don't have an energy supplier and those who live overseas receive it? How incompetent can Government expenditure get?

you comment:-

"The logical step would be to abolish both child benefit and winter fuel allowance altogether and incorporate them in higher tax credits targeting benefits at low income families regardless of age."

Dont forget the disabled who cannot work that are on income support who do not have dependent children who are in fuel poverty

Hamish / IFAwatcher - in principle you may be correct and it would be the liebour way. In practice the inefficiencies of the means testing outweigh the inefficiencies (iniquities if you like) of paying a flat rate. If it was not efficient to means test for the £1000s per family paid in child benefit then it most certainly isn't for the £100s in heating allowance also.

Whether they are abolished or not is one thing but actually I'd go further and aboslish NI (saving 50,000 jobs) and tax credits and all the rest and make the existing income tax system the primary way to allocate resources. Only politicians are paranoid about touching the headline base rates lest we ask more questions about how taxes are raised and spent.

IMO it would benefit the country greatly to have an annual user friendly statement of accounts sent to every household showing the income, outgoings and debt - the first two in pie charts that the majority can understand. For all major infrastructure projects they should be on the chart then we better judge if we can afford it. Olympics, T5, Trident, Crossrail, HS2 etc. etc.

i dont know if is true but a work mate told me he gets a wfa and he is working full time at 61 years old and his wife is working

I am not poor neither am I rich but I was born into a poor family, my father died when I was 6 & my mother worked until retirement. However I went to grammar school, am professionally qualified as a master mariner. I retired recently from a high pressure job with long working hours & it was potentially dangerous but luckily I loved the job. I was the only Brit in my department & retired, at my employer's request, the day before my 66th birthday. I know there are genuinely poor people who need help, but why should my taxes go towards supporting people who did not take advantage of their education, have, or father illegitimate children and cannot get off their backsides and do something for themselves? Turn that television off and get moving.

Hamish Milne above - we are UK pensioners living in France, but have never claimed the WFA. Not because it is not cold here (minus 2C last night), but we don't really need it at the moment.

However, should we ever fall on harder times (if our sterling pension continues to fall against the euro), then should we be denied it when wealthier UK based pensioners use part of it for winter sunshine holidays, as friends of ours have confirmed?

However, I do agree that for those retired to southern Spain, for example, it is an anomaly, but the cost of proving who needs it would probably be greater than a universal pay out.

The foreword to the article suggests any change to winter fuel allowance would be unfair but you then demonstrate why changes need to be made.

My wife and I are in receipt of WFA but, in strict terms, do not need it.

Surely the simplest would be to make this taxable with the Revenue basing Tax Codes on asssumption that any taxpayer over 60 is in receipt of a WFA.

An individual for whom this not the case would be entitled to appeal against the tax imposition.

If my winter fuel allowance is abolished then I want lower taxes on my pension income, which is, despite my best investing efforts, not that much.

Any one feeling well off need not claim -- me I need every penny whilst not being able to find suitable work other than gambling on the stock market trying to make a few extra groats. More tax -- stamp duty, US withholding tax, broking fees etc etc.

Hamish surely the WFA payments are considered "part " of the statutory basic pension - as indeed is the bus pass. Accepting that why not carry your argument to it's logical conclusion and means test the basic pension as well. After all there are many many pensioners that can live comfortably without our basic state pension and compared to the rest of main Europe it is not very generous anyway.

Winter Fuel allowance is exactly the same as the Pensioners's free bus pass. Its called Universal Benefits, invented by the Labour Govt of old to get the Middle class vote. The most unsustainable of all has already withered on the vine with a shreik of horror of its future potential cost and that was the original SERPS ( The bargain of the Century if you were astute enough to spot it at the Time.. The universal bit was to make it more palatable to the long suffering Tax payer, and to get round Means testing with all its flaws and armies of snoopers to make it work. Means testing is demeaning ,like free school meals. The most profound cut of all which nobody can foretell the outcome is Housing Allowance. Will the land lords withdraw from the market? Will rents really drop in the face of the housing benefit cut? Will the Buy to let market dry up?. I think it is the dose of reality Britain needs to wean it of the Handout Nanny state. Great isnt it.

For 'majic' above - It gets very cold here in southern Spain in winter as well. Try living inland from the Costa del Sol and you would find it too hot in summer and very cold in winter. A double whammy - the cost of cooling and then heating. And yes, OK, it was our choice to be here.

However, as UK pensioners we do receive our WFA and why not, we contributed as much in taxes and NI during our lifetime of working in the UK as anyone else? If it gets chopped for everyone, then OK. But to pick on UK expats living elsewhere in the EU in retirement would be grossly unfair.

You are, like a lot of ex pats, misguided regarding WFA entitlement. If you were not already receiving it when you became ex pat, then you do not qualify for it, so I hope you never 'fall on harder times'.

I live on the Costa Blanca and receive the WFA. I can assure you that winters here can be very cold, even with snow sometimes. Spain is a cold, damp country with a hot sun. In the north of Spain, in the Spanish civil war, more soldiers died of cold than battle wounds.

I don't claim my WFA but I don't begrudge those living in Spain who do. There are costs entailed in their going to live in a place where they make fewer demands on the services provided by the UK state and, as Nico says, the climate is not as benign as some suppose.

But rather than means test WFA (a costly and inefficient business plagues by anomalies as we see with child benefit), why not simply continue it as a universal benefit and make it (and child benefit) taxable? It works with the state pension.

Yes for some of us WFA is essential, but for those better off than ourselves, who do not need it , it should be stopped. We have friends living in the South of France who laugh at the ineptitude of our government, in paying them WFA

Does anyone know the origin of the idea of Fuel Poverty, which I think is quoted as more than 10% of income spent on fuel? It seems arbitrary to me. Who decided that 10% was the poverty line?

Why not just get the pensioners to send in their winter fuel bills to a nominated government office for payment covering the coldest months of the year. A lot of better off pensioners don't need or use it for winter fuel but use it for Christmas presents, nights out or take a holiday with it. It should be means tested as is everything other benefit in this country (apart from FA). The fact that most pensioners abroad have paid their taxes is neither here nor there, the WFA is not a right like a state pension that we all pay for, it is intended as a benefit to assist those in genuine need in this country who would rather go cold than turn their heating on as they cannot afford it. The affordability of this benefit is based on today, not when expat pensioners paid taxes in the 60's 70's and 80's. I have yet to hear of older people in Spain dying from the cold. I never realised how incompetent the Labour Government have been before this spending review was announced. People seem to think they can go live abroad and cherry pick all the good things and reject the bad and don't hesitate to fly back for free health and dental treatment. Are they for example willing to pay more in taxes to the UK Government from Spain to reduce our deficit like the rest of us have to? Don't be silly.

To Nico (above) and others - We actually know Costa del Sol very well, having spent five long winter breaks in Nerja and Frigialana, before trying a couple of winter months in La Herradura and finally in Javea in Alicante. Despite being there in the months of December through to February, it was seldom as cold as here (western France) and England, and the cold weather never lasted so long either. I do appreciate however, that in the Sierra Nevada and in Competa, it can get snowy at times. However, my point, as others have made, is that WFA is an irrational benefit, and if universal should be taxable in one's country of residence.

... and Yes, we do know that (again irrationally) you cannot claim it abroad, if you were not receiving it in the UK before "emigrating". We chose not to apply for it, even when living in England and entitled to it.

I would like to see universal WFA scrapped and only paid to those in genuine need of it - but how to do that economically, is beyond me - given the number of other benefit cheats

Presumably it would be an easy matter to pay the WFA only to those who are in receipt of a pension credit therefore going to those pensioners in greatest need

sorry but just to let those who read my comments that i am not THEroy walker,

I seem to have stirred the hornets nest here, what I was getting at was that this, like all benefits, should only be paid to those that need it most - not those that live somewhere that it gets cold sometimes or those that don't even pay energy bills!!

Universal benefits are unaffordable and in the case of WFA 82% unnecessary!

The state giving money to people that do not need it is not going to help Britain...neither is allowing the workshy / that have never worked or no intention of working to claim more benefits than someone working on the minimum wage. Putting a cap on benefits for a family of the equivalant take home pay of £26,000 is obviously far too high but is hopefully the start of the gov getting tough on the people looking for a free ride and the benefit cheats.

What is more gauling is listening to all those Coalition Ministers saying "We are all in it together". We all know nothing could be further from the truth. In the first place being a thrifty pensioner was a profound mistake. The politicians take you for granted as a milch cow. Secondly everyone knows that they all have Family Trusts set up, and companies in the Cayman Islands and Carribean Tax Havens. Daily we are fed yet another case or two where Members of the House of Lords or MPs and European MEPs are being investigated for expenses fiddles. I will agree to be in it together when they cease to have profits accumulate un taxed in Tax Haven ,then pay Dividends free from NI contributions back in the UK. They are taking us for MUGS.

Graham, unfortunately its their game and their rules, you need to be in their club to get the best out of their rules (which seem like accidental loop holes! but in reality are designed this way for personal gain) so when it is pointed out and made public they have not done anything wrong, they are left looking smug and squeaky clean. ...will it ever change?