Herefordshire’s Green and Conservative MPs voted against government moves to cut the winter fuel payment to all but the most needy pensioners.

At a vote in the Commons yesterday (Tuesday September 10), the government defeated the Conservative motion to block the cut by 348 votes to 228, a majority of 120, with 52 Labour MPs not voting.

RELATED NEWS:

Newly elected Green MP for North Herefordshire Ellie Chowns said in the parliamentary debate on the vote that fuel poverty is “an enormous issue” in her constituency, on which “many hundreds” had written to her.

“A combination of demographics, geography, housing stock and living standards” means the cut will hit Herefordshire particularly hard, impacting on people’s health and leaving them “with the choice of heating or eating”, she said.

On X/Twitter, she called the government’s policy “socially regressive, economically numerate [sic] and politically inept”.

She earlier tweeted of “the brass neck of Conservatives wringing hands about poverty when they spent 14 years running public services into the ground”.

Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire Jesse Norman, who also voted to block the cut in the payment, said it would hit around 880,000 vulnerable pensioner households.

“Many hundreds of poorer pensioners in Herefordshire will be affected, despite an explicit statement from Labour during the general election that they had no plans to change pensioner benefits,” he said.

“The government should have consulted on fairer and more accurate ways to make the savings without hurting this vulnerable elderly part of the population.”