Rachel Reeves has been explaining the "difficult decision" to limit receipt of winter fuel payments to only the poorest pensioners.
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00:00Following the budget back in October obviously we got some reaction from local people here
00:05in Sunderland. One of the things which was a common issue was obviously about the reduction
00:11of the winter fuel support which people get and I know the benchmark was set at people
00:16on pension credit. I think we all agree that if you've got hundreds of thousands of pounds
00:19in the bank you shouldn't be getting support with your energy bills. What was the sort
00:23of rationale behind the benchmark being pension credit because obviously you've got people
00:27maybe just above that level who may well need that money and it could still be a struggle
00:32for them. I inherited a £22 billion black hole in the public finances when I became
00:37Chancellor. This was overspending by the previous government that they did not reveal to the
00:43public during the election campaign, didn't tell Parliament about, didn't even tell the
00:48independent government forecasters of public finances and so I've had to make a number
00:53of difficult decisions since becoming Chancellor to get the public finances back in order but
00:58the reason I've done that is because when a government loses control of the public finances
01:02you see inflation and interest rates and mortgage rates go through the roof and that's disastrous
01:07for families and for businesses and for pensioners too and we saw the impact of that when Liz
01:13Trust and the Conservatives lost control of the public finances. So we've had to make
01:17a number of difficult decisions including restricting winter fuel payments to only those
01:23pensioners. A million pensioners, a little bit more than a million, will still get winter
01:29fuel payment because they're on the pension credit and also since we launched a campaign
01:35on pension credit the number of people applying for it has gone up by more than 150% so we're
01:41trying to do everything we can to make sure that people who are entitled to the support
01:45are getting it. In addition to that our commitment to the triple lock means that everybody of
01:53pension age will see their pension go up next year by £470 and that's in addition to the £850
02:02increase in the new state pension this year so pensioners are getting increases in the pension
02:08that are above the cost of living and through our commitment to the pension credit the poorest
02:15pensioners will continue to receive winter fuel payment. It was a difficult decision but we had
02:21to take difficult decisions to get our public finances back in order. I think the other thing
02:25that the Chancellor was able to do with the budget was also extend the household support fund so
02:29that's been £2.6 million coming to Sunderland and Sunderland City Council have decided to use
02:34that. I think it's going to help 5,000 pensioners across Sunderland so actually it includes those
02:38people who are slightly just above that pension credit threshold as well which is a great decision.
02:45Again in terms of feedback from the budget we did get a number of local smaller businesses get in
02:49touch who were concerned about the increase in national insurance. I know it was done to put
02:54the burden on the employer not necessarily the employee but you know some people have said you
02:59know it could lead to possibly having to make job redundancies or it could impact other employees
03:03pay increases across the course of the next few years so what would your response be to them?
03:08Well we did increase employers national insurance in the budget and that money will go towards
03:14both addressing the public finance challenges but also we put £25 billion into the National
03:19Health Service at the budget and that's essential if we're going to bring down hospital waiting
03:24lists and hospital waiting times that have got totally out of control. Now just say to small
03:30businesses in Sunderland that I would urge them to look at the employment allowance because we've
03:36more than doubled the size of the employment allowance which is the threshold before you
03:40start paying national insurance and that means if you're a small business that is for example
03:45paying four people full-time at the national living wage from next April you won't pay any
03:51national insurance whatsoever there are a million small businesses who will be either paying less
03:57no or the same national insurance as they're paying currently because of that support that
04:02we put in at the budget specifically to help smaller businesses who I know will struggle
04:07more than others to pay higher levels of national insurance.