Manchester mayor Andy Burnham calls for softening of winter fuel support cut

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Greater Manchester mayor and former Labour cabinet minister Andy Burnham has called on the UK government to consider softening its contentious planned cut to the winter fuel allowance.

MPs will vote this afternoon on the move, which would withdraw the benefit from all those not in receipt of pension credit.

Burnham said there was a “case” for reforming the payment but called on ministers not to rule out a “tapered” approach to its withdrawal.

Pensioners are often “reluctant” to apply for pension credit, he said, while the income threshold at which people become eligible for it “is pretty low anyway”.

“I would ask them not to rule out putting in that possible extra help for pensioners who are right at that cliff edge,” he told the BBC.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has so far refused to mitigate the cut, which has sparked a backlash from both the left and the right.

About 10mn pensioners will lose the winter fuel payment, which is currently a universal benefit. In future the payment, worth up to £300, will be means tested.

The state pension is expected to rise by £460 from April 2025, based on the latest official wage growth data.

Reeves on Monday night urged Labour MPs to show unity in defending the “difficult decisions” she said she has to take to put the public finances back on a sound footing.

“We stand, we lead and we govern together,” she said, as she tried to limit a Labour rebellion. Critics of the policy expect at least a dozen Labour MPs to defy the whips and abstain.

Sir Keir Starmer, prime minister, has made it clear through his party’s enforcers in the whips office that any Labour MP voting against the measure in the vote on Tuesday afternoon can expect to be suspended.

Jonathan Reynolds, business secretary, defended the measure. “We have no choice . . . We’re fixing the foundations [of the economy], and that’s a difficult message today,” he told Sky News.

“But it’s not just to correct the problem, it’s to make sure your house is better in future and the better future we want, more prosperity for everyone, comes through stability and responsibility.”

Although Labour expects to win the vote comfortably, there is widespread discomfort in the party that one of Reeves’s first “difficult decisions” hit pensioners, some of them living near the poverty line.