Government fuels campaign fire

By Sunil Peck

The government has yet again refused to extend winter fuel payments to severely disabled people under the age of 60, despite new figures showing that more than 600,000 disabled people are living in fuel poverty.

The figures, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, show that of more than six million households with at least one disabled person, 607,000 of them are fuel poor. (A household is fuel poor if at least a tenth of its income is spent on heating.)

Labour MP Roger Berry, a long-standing campaigner for the extension of winter fuel payments, said the new figures were “a disgrace”.

He added: “It is absolutely unacceptable that so many disabled people should be living in poverty. If the winter fuel payment was the major instrument for tackling fuel poverty among pensioners, then why should it not be the main instrument for tackling fuel poverty for people under 60 who face exceptionally high fuel bills?”

Despite the figures, a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman told Disability Now: “We have no plans to extend the winter fuel payments scheme to people under 60.

“The benefits system already provides help for disabled people under 60 in recognition of extra costs they may experience.

“Some of the older people aged over 60 described as fuel poor might be disabled, and some of the households with a disabled person described as fuel poor might be aged over 60 so it’s perfectly possible that a significant number of the disabled people in these figures are already receiving the winter fuel payment. The winter fuel payment is there because of the vulnerability of people as they get older to cold-related illnesses.”

The latest refusal comes eight years after we first began campaigning for the benefit to be extended.

In 2006, we revealed the strongest evidence yet that disabled people under the age of 60 are dying every winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes.

Later the same year, a Disability Now survey showed that 90 per cent of older MPs (37 of the 42 who responded to our questions), including David Blunkett and Sir Menzies Campbell, supported extending the benefit.

Mr Berry said the government’s Warm Front Scheme [which funds energy efficiency measures, including the installation of central heating] does help many households, including “hundreds” in his own constituency.

The government announced in December that the Warm Front Scheme would receive £800 million over three years, which it says could help more than 400,000 of England’s poorest households.

In addition, energy suppliers will be obliged to spend £1.5 billion over the next three years to make homes more energy efficient.