Mims Davies

I thank the hon. Gentleman for standing up for his constituents. I agree about the disproportionate and deep impact on our cold spots in Northern Ireland, rural areas, the north and Scotland. This benefit reform will not be easy. We bear the scars on the Opposition Benches from universal credit, but the change was truly worth it. As the hon. Gentleman said, what does the impact assessment actually say? Who gains, and does it stack up financially? I think we all know that it does not, else the Government would have not ignored the Social Security Advisory Committee process and its scrutiny. They would have done a proper impact assessment and a regulatory assessment, and they would not have tried to avoid a vote on the Floor of the House. Government Members will troop through the Lobby again, as fodder for an out-of-touch Prime Minister, or they may abstain to avoid the eyes of the Chancellor, deep in the hope that spraying billions of pounds on gimmicks like a shell company called GB Energy will be worth it. They must be aware that they will have to face people in their communities who will want to understand why a few millionaires were worth the attack on millions. Let us take June. She told the BBC that she will struggle to stay warm this winter. She is already planning her jumpers, cardigans and candles. My constituent Valerie from East Grinstead wrote to me—one of almost 20,000 affected—and said: “I am 80 years old and live on a State Pension of less than £11k, not the…£13k that I keep reading about… I don’t know who gets that much but I certainly don’t!” She goes on to say that it will be “a long, cold winter… please do what you can to get this dreadful decision reversed.” Labour Members could join us in the Lobby to back pensioners like Valerie. The Opposition welcome the household support fund extension and the commitment to the Conservatives’ triple lock, but we knew going into winter, with energy bills going up, that the right thing to do was to help with cost of living payments. In my experience as an MP and a Minister, I know that the worries and responsibilities of this job come to all Members in the dead of night. It will be in the darkness and the cold in the small hours that women and men who have served this country and supported families and communities will be lying awake worried, fretting and feeling afraid. For those who are frail and living with a disability or a health condition, warmth matters to their health, Loneliness, isolation and worry will eat away at them, because they cannot take a job or do some extra hours to help make ends meet. Medics have warned that this will have serious health threats, as has Age UK. Pensioners on low incomes matter. They truly are the people who know how to budget. They are the people who eke out and work out their finances. Nobody will work out how this new Labour Government of service has targeted those people so shamefully this autumn. Those families will not forget. They are not statistics. They are Valerie and June, and thousands of others in every community and constituency. They are proud pensioners, who too often go without but do not tell others that they are. Again this winter, they will go without for others. This is horrific. It is a blight on this new Government. It is not right for this to happen to pensioners on their watch. It is their choice. I ask that hon. Members and Ministers do the right thing and stop this callous cut now.