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This is Caroline Wheeler from the Sunday Times with The Week in Westminster.

A year ago, Rishi Sunak fired the starting gun for the general election.

Six weeks later, Labour won by a landslide, with a majority just shy of Tony Blair's in 1997.

But already, Labour MPs on the brink of mutiny after a disappointing set of local election results.

For weeks they have been piling pressure on the government

to rethink taking winter fuel allowance

from all but the poorest pensioners

and planned to slash £5 pounds from the benefits bill.

At Prime Minister's questions, Sarkir Starmer finally announced the U-turn they'd been waiting for.

But I recognise that people are still feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis, including pensioners.

And as the economy improves, we want to make sure people feel those improvements in their days as their lives go forward.

And that is why we want to ensure that as we go forward, more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments.

To discuss the move, I brought together the Conservative peer David Willits,

president of the Resolution Foundation, which focuses on people on lower incomes.

And Claire Ainsley, former policy director to Sakea Stama, now at the Progressive Policy Institute.

I began by asking Claire, was the winter fuel Uter the right thing to do?

I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right thing to do.

I think it was probably the only thing to do after the local election result when it was so palpable that that was fueling a lot of the rage, actually, that people were getting towards

labour.

I think we have to see the detail.

We don't know quite where the threshold is going to be set.

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