Treasury deputy: Labour didn't plan winter fuel allowance cuts before electionSource: BBC Newsnight
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00:00You've announced a big benefit cut today outside of the budget. 10 million pensioners won't
00:05get the winter fuel payment anymore, something that would normally be announced in a budget.
00:11Are you honestly telling our audience tonight that you had no thoughts about cutting the
00:17winter fuel allowance until the day you got into the Treasury on July 5th?
00:22We did not work on this policy in opposition. I can give you that promise because I worked
00:25on all of our policies in opposition.
00:27No, I'm not saying it was necessarily a policy or else you'd have had to put it in your manifesto.
00:31Are you saying you had no conversations about the winter fuel allowance?
00:34No, we didn't. We didn't work this policy. This is not a secret policy that we've pulled
00:38out of the hat post-election. Far from it.
00:40But you must have had conversations about it.
00:42No, because we didn't realise the amount of in-year spending the Conservatives have been
00:47doing that was outside of the budget. We only discovered that coming into power a few weeks
00:51ago. That's why the Chancellor was very clear today that this is not a policy change that
00:55we relished or that we wanted to announce because we recognise it's a difficult decision.
01:00But the winter fuel payments are, because they used to be universal, a very untargeted
01:05use of taxpayers' money, and because we need to get money back into the bank and we'll
01:09save £1.5 billion a year by doing this, we've decided to target it to pensioners that need
01:13it the most.