Fuel figures aid campaign

The government has admitted that many disabled people are in fuel poverty. Sunil Peck reports.

The government has admitted that there are nearly 100,000 disabled people under the age of 60 in fuel poverty.

The figures provide the strongest grounds yet for extending winter fuel payments to people under 60 who receive the middle and higher rates of disability living allowance (DLA).

They were released by energy minister Malcolm Wicks, in response to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Roger Berry, a long-standing campaigner for the extension of winter fuel payments.

The government has already said that in 2005, there were around 1.5 million fuel-poor households in England, of which more than 600,000 contained a disabled person.

But Mr Wicks has now admitted that around 98,000 of the households contained a disabled person under the age of 60, although he said it was impossible to identify how many of them claimed higher rates of DLA.

The figures are likely to have increased since 2005 because of sharp increases in fuel prices.

A household is fuel poor if at least a tenth of its income is spent on heating.

Mr Berry said: “These figures show that fuel poverty is a real problem for disabled people. I recently raised this in the House of Commons again, calling for winter fuel payments to be extended to those on higher rate DLA. This has now become a matter of real urgency.

“Any sane winter fuel allowance system would help compensate these people for the additional heating costs they incur,” he added.

The government has vowed to eradicate fuel poverty among vulnerable groups by 2010, but a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman said there were still no plans to extend winter fuel payments.

He again issued the government’s line that disabled people under 60 already receive benefits “in recognition of extra costs they may experience”.

When pressed about the DWP’s plans for helping fuel-poor disabled people, the spokesman said responsibility for fuel poverty was shared with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

But disabled student and Disability Now reader Arlene Anne McKeever said the DWP’s comments were “blatantly untrue”.

She said many disabled people had no extra money to cover additional heating costs. “The amount we receive simply does not afford us an acceptable quality of life,” she added.

Meanwhile, in his Budget speech, the Chancellor announced that winter fuel payments for the over-60s would increase from £200 to £250, while those for over-80s would rise from £300 to £400.

Paul Smith, executive director of the Spinal Injuries Association, said he was angry that the Budget did not extend the allowance to disabled people under 60 whose medical conditions required them to keep their homes warm.

And Steve Broach, campaign manager at Every Disabled Child Matters, said he was disappointed that it failed to extend the payments to families with disabled children.