Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott says the government may have won the vote to remove Winter Fuel Allowance for some pensioners but “comprehensively” lost the argument. The plan to means test the payment cleared the Commons on Tuesday with just one Labour rebel voting against it but dozens of MPs on the government benches were missing in action. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Yesterday, what we saw was Labour winning the vote, but
00:03comprehensively losing the argument. It's a political
00:06choice that they made, one which, by the way, was very long
00:09planned. And they chose not to give pensioners the notice that
00:13they needed to change things for this winter. And I think that
00:17there is popular public acclaim now that shows that this is
00:20something that they need to think again about. I commend
00:23those people like Rachel Maskell, who spoke out against
00:27this. And I think that the abstentions that we saw
00:29yesterday were significant, and I hope they lead the government
00:33to think again. We're talking about taking away £300, £200
00:37to £300 from pensioners who are on £13,000 a year. That is not
00:42okay. It's not acceptable in anyone's book.