Martin Lewis warns state pensioners will 'either' be £200 or £500 worse off

Martin Lewis has warned state pensioners will either be £200 OR £500 worse off this winter. The BBC Sounds podcast host dialled into ITV Good Morning Britain to discuss Pension Credit awareness, after the £300 Winter Fuel Payment cut for pensioners.

“Most people who are going to claim it are claiming it. What you have left are the low hanging fruit," Mr Lewis told Ed Balls and Susanna Reid. As he dialled in from his North London home, Mr Lewis said: "You have some people who are scared of filling in the forms and find it too difficult, some people who are too proud to take it, and many people who are elderly and have issues like onset dementia which means they will never claim this payment."

Mr Lewis said energy bills are £100 cheaper than last year BUT pensioners could lose the £300 Winter Fuel Payment AND £300 Cost of Living payment - meaning they stand to be £500 worse off. Of course, some OAPs will get the £300 Winter Fuel Allowance, meaning they limit this to £200.

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The Money Saving Expert said: “And that is a real problem, even if the government did a one on one exercise to everybody who doesn’t get the full state pension, even if it set up a three-digit phone number (because only government can set up three digit phone numbers like the 159 number you can use to contact the bank to be sure it isn’t a scam) to make it easier."

Mr Lewis said: "I think if you got down to just 700,000 people not claiming it you’d be doing well. It is an incredibly difficult thing to do and I think this is the hole in the government’s argument. There are two problems over the Winter Fuel Payment going.

"One is means testing itself is too narrow, effectively saying if you earn less than £11,400 you’ll get the £300 payment.” He added: “For those 700,000 or 800,000 pensioners who don’t get pension credit, it means by definition they have less than £11,400 a year income.

"Less than that. These are the poorest pensioners. It means that the government thinks that they should get winter fuel payment and they’re in such a dire state that they should get winter fuel payment, but they still won’t get it.

“The mechanisms the government are putting in place may help a few more claim, but there will still be huge numbers who aren’t claiming. And I haven’t yet heard a decent answer about what we’re going to do to help those people.”