SNP ‘considering’ reinstating winter fuel payments for all Scottish pensioners
SNP ministers are “considering” reinstating winter fuel payments for all Scottish pensioners following a Budget windfall.
Ivan McKee, the SNP finance minister, confirmed the devolved government was looking into whether the annual payouts could be delivered on a universal basis after Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, last week pledged an unprecedented funding boost for Holyrood.
The SNP manifesto in 2021 committed the party to retaining universal payments once the benefit was devolved this year.
However, it reneged on the pledge after the Labour UK Government cut entitlements, meaning the cash sent to Scotland to deliver the policy would have been significantly reduced.
The devolution of the benefit was also put back by 12 months, meaning it will be administered by the Scottish Government for the first time next year.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr McKee refused to rule out using some of the promised £3.4 billion boost in Treasury funding from April to provide the payment to all Scottish pensioners next winter.
The Scottish Government is also expected to receive an extra £1.5 billion this financial year.
He said ministers were considering reinstating the benefit on a universal basis despite Jeane Freeman, the former SNP health secretary, later admitting she and other wealthy pensioners did not need the annual payment of up to £300.
“We are obviously looking at options to see what we can do,” Mr McKee told the BBC when asked if he would reverse cuts to winter fuel payment entitlement in Scotland.
“We need to look at these numbers. It’s absolutely something we’re considering.”
The Scottish Government has previously said maintaining universal eligibility this year would have cost it between £140 million and £160 million, which it said it could not afford.
However, Labour’s spending increases, announced last week, will deliver a major funding boost to the devolved government, despite John Swinney admitting that a huge chunk of the windfall would be swallowed up this year by funding generous public sector pay deals.
‘Big unknown’
The SNP has lambasted Labour for restricting entitlement to the winter fuel payment to those on pension credit or other means-tested benefits.
It comes despite the Scottish Government’s own independent poverty commission claiming the benefit was “extraordinarily poorly targeted as regards to addressing poverty”.
Ms Freeman, speaking shortly after Mr McKee’s remarks, criticised the “brutal” manner in which Labour announced its winter fuel payment cuts in July but said reviewing universal entitlements was “perfectly reasonable.”
The 71-year-old added: “I personally actually agree that universalism on everything is not the wisest and best way to use public resources. I, for example, am lucky enough [that] I do not need the winter fuel payment and yet I used to get it.
“That doesn’t seem fair to me. But to remove it in the manner in which it was done felt insensitive to me and cut through with people.”
Should the winter fuel payment be reinstated for all pensioners in Scotland, it would serve as another taxpayer-funded perk not available in the rest of the UK.
Russell Findlay, the new leader of the Scottish Tories, last week called for all SNP “freebies”, including prescriptions, tuition fees and baby boxes, to be reconsidered in a bid to save money.
Following years of complaining about Westminster-imposed “austerity”, the SNP has conceded that Ms Reeves’s Budget was a “step in the right direction”.
However, the party has called for clarity over whether public services, such as the NHS, will be reimbursed for costs arising from increases to employers’ National Insurance contributions.
Mr McKee said this remained the “big unknown” ahead of the SNP Government setting out its own Budget plans next month.
Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, said “conversations” over the issue would take place between Scottish ministers and the Treasury.
He said: “We recognise there will be an impact for example on our National Health Service and that’s not an impact we want to see.”