Labour is considering a U-turn on its controversial Winter Fuel Payment cuts in an effort to "head off a rebellion," political commentator Jennifer Powers has claimed.Speaking to GB News, Powers suggested the Government is exploring ways to modify the policy amid concerns of a potential parliamentary rebellion.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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00:00Brilliant. Let's come on to the politics. It's my fault. These plans to perhaps U-turn,
00:07more likely that it's going to be watered down than scrapped altogether, isn't it?
00:10I think that's right. It was 1.4 billion in savings that the government was looking for
00:16with the policy when it came in last July. It was one of the early announcements by the
00:21government within three weeks of the election. Immediately there was backlash and that hasn't
00:28gone away, as you say, with the local election results that came up on the doorstep quite
00:33a lot. So it's one thing in the mix for whether the government could water down eligibility
00:39criteria, maybe make it available to more pensioners than is currently the case. I think it's part
00:45of a bigger story, though, because we have the largest welfare reforms in a decade being
00:52planned by the government and primarily around adult disability benefits called the PIP. And
01:00they're looking to save, I think it's something like 6.5 billion, which is quite a sizable amount
01:07of money. And that's coming to a head in Parliament. And the government is looking, despite its big
01:12majority, for its first potential defeat in the Commons on the back of that. So there's
01:18moving parts here in terms of what can the government do to head off this rebellion. Maybe they can
01:25do something around those adult disability payments, but again, they need the savings.
01:30What could they do about winter fuel allowance? Could they move the threshold? So it's all
01:35up for discussion, I guess. I mean, the problem with it is that even
01:38with the winter fuel payments, if they think changing that is going to win them some support
01:42back, it just seems like complete political ineptitude.
01:48In the middle of a cost of living crisis, which they said they were going to tackle, and in
01:53the run up to winter, and fuel bills rising anyway because of the off what? No, not off
01:59what? The price cap. Off gem. Off gem. Doing this in the first place, it's going to be very
02:07hard to be forgiven for it. Well, I think that's right. And it could get worse with some of these
02:13changes to welfare more generally. But from the government's perspective, I mean, they are in a tight
02:18place because we see what happens when the markets aren't happy and don't consider the government to
02:24be fiscally credible or fiscally responsible. So, you know, in terms of balancing the budget,
02:30there are pressures on the public purse that continue to grow. You know, we do need to commit
02:36more to defense spending because of what's happening geopolitically and the fact that the U.S. is pulling
02:42back. We've had some news very recently around the U.S. not wanting to pay as much for drugs
02:50because at the moment, America subsidizes medications pretty much for the rest of the
02:56world because, you know, we get cheaper prices for our drugs because the NHS negotiates on behalf
03:05of sort of all U.S., U.K. citizens. And so U.S. taxpayers or U.S. consumers pay a lot more for
03:14drugs than we do in the rest of the world. And so Trump has said that's going to stop and they're
03:18going to pay less. So that's going to actually make the cost here go up for the NHS and for
03:23taxpayers. So the government is trying to balance the books.