REMEMBER how we found out a few days ago that the UK government had used the French overseas’ départements in the tropics for working out average temperatures and their relation to winter fuel payments?
Well according to the Connexion newspaper there are just 30 people receiving UK pensions in the DOM-TOM territories made up of the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte and French Guiana in South America.
This compares to just under 60,000 British state pensioners in mainland France.
Not surprisingly drawing in the mild winter weather of these territories completely skews the average temperature of mainland France itself.
The UK government had said that a ‘temperature test’ would be used to decide eligibility for winter fuel payments and that the changes would come into force from the winter of 2015/16.
With the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, saying that people living in warmer countries should not receive the payment, ‘it is, after all, a payment for winter fuel’ he said earlier this year.
The temperature rule meant that while people living in the Alps or Pyrenees would no longer receive the payment, expats living in Sicily retained their entitlement.
And it also came to light that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had estimated that by cutting the entitlement to winter fuel payments for some pensioners, it would save £30 million a year.
A Winter Fuel Payment e-petition has been produced to seek support and oppose the UK government’s proposals, with nearly 5,000 people currently signed up.
Comments
2 responses to “How 30 British pensioners in the DOM-TOMs have been used to cut winter fuel payments to 60,000”
Pity the e-petition is poorly drafted and still includes other warmer countries such as Oz and Caribbean in its complaint.
And were the Canary Islands included in Spain’s statistics, and Madeira in Portugal’s, to also exclude them from the winter fuel payments? How else to explain their exclusion also while Italy remains in?