Member

But I need to make something very clear. The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann—like many people I have been reading her in many of my newspapers recently, even the ones I do not normally read—had a full-page article in the Daily Mail yesterday in which she expressed her views much as she has tonight. She said in that article that it was too late for people to apply now for pension credit. That is simply untrue. The qualifying week for winter fuel payment is the week of 16 September, but pension credit can be backdated for three months, so someone can claim until 21 December; it will be backdated and, as long as they get in, they will also get their winter fuel allowance as well as any backdated payment to which they might have been entitled. Remember, pension credit could be worth £3,900 a year.