For my own part, the most sinister action of the new government is its abandonment of the provisions to ensure that our universities uphold freedom of speech. It’s a preoccupation of mine and I’ve spoken at universities a dozen times about it in the last three years.
I accept however, that my constituents have more pressing concerns: my email inbox is populated, not by outrage about denying of freedom of expression, but concern about fuel bills because the new government has chosen to withdraw winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners.
The Government insists that this is because it has inherited the worst economic situation since the Second World War. This is rubbish. The worst inheritance -by a country mile- was in 2010, when the Coalition Government arrived to a note from the outgoing Labour administration stating that ‘there is no money left’.
On the contrary, political commentators continue to castigate Rishi for not having delayed the election until after the glowing economic data, including the fastest growth among the richest nations, -and which arrived after polling day- had been published.
I accept that there are all sorts of problems faced by the UK, which are common to all the developed nations, consequent upon the impact of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But being in government is about making choices.
The public finances were tight. There was no scope for a public spending spree. On the contrary, there was need for restraint and retrenchment. There was, however, no black hole. The new government could not have been taken by surprise: they had, in accordance with our constitutional conventions, access to the most senior civil servants from the beginning of this year – they were able to ask anything. The Office For Budget Responsibility audited the public finances just before the election, they reported no black hole.
Just four days before the Chancellor’s announcement about her discovery of the black hole, she presented to Parliament the Estimates for Public Expenditure, by law these have to be the best estimates of the public finances that can be had, signed off by ministers and the most senior civil servants. But no black hole was reported.
Of course, now there is indeed a black hole. That hole is one that the Government has chosen to dig itself, by giving in to public sector pay demands without any attempt to negotiate improvements in productivity. The Government has chosen to pay for this first, by withdrawing winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners. And second, by undisclosed tax increases to be announced in October.
The Chancellor insists that the pensioners who really need the winter fuel payments will continue to receive them because they are already in receipt of means-tested benefits.
In this respect she fails to understand the psyche of pensioners who, despite many publicity campaigns, do not claim the means-tested Pension Credit for which they would qualify.
Many pensioners on very modest incomes, regard their pension, quite properly, as something to which they are entitled because they always ‘paid their stamp’. To have to apply for a means-tested benefit however, presents a very different psychological hurdle.
Withdrawing winter fuel payments from these vulnerable pensioners is a choice by the Government.
It is our choices in life which define us, not our inheritance.