Sarah Olney

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. He makes an important point, although I would say that I welcomed the Chancellor’s commitment last week to work with older people’s charities and local authorities to raise awareness of pension credit. None the less, he is exactly right that many people will have this benefit taken away without knowing that there is pension credit for which they are eligible and should claim. As the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has highlighted, the DWP has assumed that the uptake of pension credit will increase by just five percentage points, and that will still exclude around 700,000 pensioners. Have the Government made a proper assessment of what the impact will be if uptake of pension credits increases by more than that amount? I continue to call for assurance that the Government will ensure that all those eligible for pension credit claim both the benefit itself and the winter fuel payment. We will be voting against the scrapping of this stream of support for pensioners. Although we recognise that the Government face difficult choices given the appalling mess left by the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats will continue to advocate for the necessity of winter fuel payments. The mismanagement of our economy by the outgoing Conservative Government has left formidable challenges and we understand that undoing that damage will not be easy.