Labour punishes pensioners again - as they're hit with another £17k bill

Labour has been accused of “punishing pensioners” as it emerged thousands will face an extra £17,000 in care home bills.

Critics say the austerity measures introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves have made a mockery of Sir Keir Starmer’s pre-election pledge to protect the “triple lock”.

This is designed to ensure pensions keep pace with inflation, while experts warned the misery of older people being forced to sell their homes will continue.

The Government also faces a pensioners’ revolt over the decision to end winter fuel payments for 9.9 million people, with campaigners warning many will “go cold” this winter as a result.

Campaigners said the Government had effectively broken its pledge to protect the pensions “triple lock”, which ensures pensions rise at least in line with inflation or earnings, because financial support for over-80s will actually fall by 3.2 per cent.

Dennis Reed, director of campaign group Silver Voices, said: “This is a reprehensible decision. Labour were quite devious on this in the run-up to the election.”

He pointed out that spending cuts announced by Ms Reeves fell largely on older people.

Eamonn Donaghy, chief executive of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, said: “The punitive approach being taken by the Chancellor is deeply troubling.”

Ms Reeves last week axed plans for an £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England would have to pay for personal care. The reform, due to come into effect next year, was designed to protect people who develop conditions such as dementia from sky-high care costs, but the Chancellor said it was unaffordable because an audit of government spending had revealed “a £22 billion hole in the public finances”.

A study by the Department for Health and Social Care reveals the devastating impact that scrapping the cap will have on pensioners.

An impact assessment produced by the department shows that almost 20,000 people in care would have benefitted from the cap at any given moment once it was fully operational.

A person with modest assets worth £105,000, including the value of their property, would have saved around £17,000 during the average stay in residential care, which is 97 weeks.

Scrapping the cap means people will no longer receive funding for care if they have assets of just £23,250, forcing many to hand over their savings or the proceeds of a property sale.

Separate figures show more than 2,300 people last year signed an agreement with their local council to use their home to pay for care.

Lucinda Allen, senior policy officer at the Health Foundation, said: “One in seven of us will have lifetime care costs of £100,000 or more.”

Ms Reeves also scrapped winter fuel payments of up to £3,000 for people who do not receive means-tested benefits such as Pension Credit.

Charity Age UK has launched an “emergency petition” urging the Government to rethink its decision.

Announcing the end of the social care cap last week, Ms Reeves said: “It will not be possible to take forward those charging reforms. This will save over £1 billion by the end of next year.”

And defending the decision to remove winter fuel payments from many pensioners, she said: “The scale of the situation we are dealing with means incredibly tough choices. I repeat today the commitment that we made in our manifesto to protect the triple lock, but today I am making the difficult decision that those not in receipt of pension credit or certain other means-tested benefits will no longer receive the winter fuel payment, from this year onwards.”

She insisted: “Let me be clear: this is not a decision I wanted to make, nor is it the one that I expected to make, but these are the necessary and urgent decisions that I must make.”