Treasury deputy insists Labour had no thoughts of cutting winter fuel allowance before election

Treasury deputy: Labour didn't plan winter fuel allowance cuts before electionSource: BBC Newsnight

Transcript

00:00You've announced a big benefit cut today outside of the budget. 10 million pensioners won't

00:05get the winter fuel payment anymore, something that would normally be announced in a budget.

00:11Are you honestly telling our audience tonight that you had no thoughts about cutting the

00:17winter fuel allowance until the day you got into the Treasury on July 5th?

00:22We did not work on this policy in opposition. I can give you that promise because I worked

00:25on all of our policies in opposition.

00:27No, I'm not saying it was necessarily a policy or else you'd have had to put it in your manifesto.

00:31Are you saying you had no conversations about the winter fuel allowance?

00:34No, we didn't. We didn't work this policy. This is not a secret policy that we've pulled

00:38out of the hat post-election. Far from it.

00:40But you must have had conversations about it.

00:42No, because we didn't realise the amount of in-year spending the Conservatives have been

00:47doing that was outside of the budget. We only discovered that coming into power a few weeks

00:51ago. That's why the Chancellor was very clear today that this is not a policy change that

00:55we relished or that we wanted to announce because we recognise it's a difficult decision.

01:00But the winter fuel payments are, because they used to be universal, a very untargeted

01:05use of taxpayers' money, and because we need to get money back into the bank and we'll

01:09save £1.5 billion a year by doing this, we've decided to target it to pensioners that need

01:13it the most.