A view from Plaid Cymru’s North Wales Member of the Senedd

Wrexham.com has invited Wrexham & Clwyd South Members of Parliament and Members of the Senedd to write a monthly article with updates on their work in their respective Parliaments and closer to home – you can find them all here.

In this month’s column Plaid Cymru’s Llyr Gruffydd MS writes:

A week is, famously, a long time in politics and it’s now 10 weeks since the new UK Labour government took power. That’s a political eternity and certainly feels like it in terms of what was promised and what is being delivered.

Change.

That was the one-word slogan on which Keir Starmer was elected.

This of course was always a little hollow when it came to Wales, which has had Labour rule for 25 years but we were told that things would change by having Labour Governments at “either end of the M4”.

Unfortunately, the biggest change we’ve seen in that time has been the UK Government’s decision to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment of up to £300 for 10 million pensioners, many of whom are living in poverty and not accessing benefits that they’re entitled to.

Here in Wales, it’s estimated that up to 80,000 pensioners are eligible for pension credit but are not claiming them – precisely the people who will be hit hardest by this decision.

The elderly and disabled people are more likely to need additional heating and the arbitrary cutting of this allowance at the same time that the typical household’s energy bill will increase by £149 a year under Ofgem’s new energy price cap smacks of a government that either doesn’t care or isn’t thinking about some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Ofgem announced that the average home energy bill will increase from £1,568 to £1,717 on 1 October. It means a typical household’s annual energy bill will rise by £149.

The new Labour UK government decided to stop winter fuel payments for those who are not in receipt of pension credits or other means-tested benefits, which will see the number of pensioners receiving the payments of up to £300 fall from 11.4 million to just 1.5 million.

So many pensioners are just above the threshold because they have a small works pension and will face serious hardship with the next cold weather. This will have consequences for our health service as well as individuals.

Living in a cold home can worsen asthma and other respiratory illnesses; it can increase the risk of heart disease and cardiac events. It can also worsen musculoskeletal conditions such as arthritis.

It also follows a painful reduction in support for disabled people when cost-of-living payments for those on benefits were cut in February this year by the Conservative government.

Labour holds the power to protect vulnerable households this winter. It should act now and ensure no pensioner is left to suffer in the cold. The UK Government must reconsider its decision to axe the Winter Fuel Payment for most pensioners.

That’s one change that would be very welcome for hundreds of thousands of people in Wales.