State pensioners who have a car face losing £520 after Winter Fuel Payment cut

State pensioners who have a car facr losing £260 in the wake of having their Winter Fuel Payment cut. There is speculation the Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) £300 Winter Fuel Allowance cut would be coupled with an end to the fuel duty freeze from October.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves could scrap the freeze, effectively adding a fiver onto the cost of a full 55-litre average tank of petrol. For a pensioner who fills up once a week, it would mean a £260 charge - but if they fill up the UK average, twice a week, if they do higher mileage, it could be £520.

The AA said pump prices had fallen in line with the drop in global oil markets, where Brent crude prices have fallen from above $80 a barrel in mid-August to $73 this week, but the savings were passed on “much sooner than would have been the case” owing to the anticipated fuel duty cut.

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Edmund King, the AA president, said: “Pure and simple, the only reason why pump prices are at a three-year low this week is because of the 5p fuel duty cut. Removing it threatens to send millions of low-income drivers back into the era of ‘perma-high’ road fuel prices.”

He warned that reversing the cut would unleash a £3.30-a-tank impact on the budgets of 9 million motorists “most of whom are low-income and struggling to balance their budgets”.

The Sir Keir Starmer government is widely expected to raise fuel duty as it prepares for a “painful” autumn budget designed to plug the “£22bn black hole” in the public finances left by the previous Conservative government.

The fuel duty cut, introduced by former Conservative Party Chancellor and Tory MP Jeremy Hunt, was called a regressive policy that benefited the wealthiest in society by critics, including the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank.