Starmer’s Winter Fuel U-Turn

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we look at a U-turn from the government, after the Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to ease cuts to winter fuel payments.

More than 10 million pensioners lost out on the payments, worth up to £300, when the pension top-up became means-tested last year.

Adam and Chris Mason discuss with Starmer’s former political director Luke Sullivan. Also, England will be the first country in the world to start vaccinating people against the STI gonorrhoea. Health and science correspondent James Gallagher explains what’s going on.

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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Chris Flynn and Laurie Kalus with Shiler Mahmoudi and Julia Webster. The technical producer was Ricardo McCarthy. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.1	Hello. Remember last year when the Chancellor Rachel Reeves said this?
0:10.1	Mr Speaker, the scale of the situation we are dealing with means incredibly tough choices.
0:16.0	I repeat today the commitment that we made in our manifesto to protect the triple lock.
0:20.6	But today I am making the difficult decision that those not in our manifesto to protect the triple lock. But today I am making
0:21.8	the difficult decision that those not in receipt of pension credit or certain other means-tested
0:26.5	benefits will no longer receive the winter fuel payment from this year onwards.
0:32.6	So that was the situation on the 29th of July, 2024. How does it sound now on the 21st of May 2025?
0:40.0	But I recognise that people are still feeling the pressure of the cost of living crisis, including pensioners.
0:47.2	And as the economy improves, we want to make sure people feel those improvements in their days as their lives go forward.
0:54.7	And that is why we want to ensure that as we go forward, more pensioners are eligible
1:00.7	for winter fuel payments.
1:03.5	As you would expect, Mr Speaker.
1:05.7	The policy is no longer the policy and the government has U-turned.
1:09.4	As you may have suspected if you'd been
1:11.4	listening to Rachel Reeves when she was on Monday's episode of Newscast. What has been going
1:16.5	on and what will it mean? We'll discuss that on this episode of Newscast.
1:20.6	Newscast from the BBC. He has just compared me to the fat controller. Did I say that?
1:29.4	I can't believe I said that.
1:30.1	Next Wednesday.
1:32.8	This is R for the benefit of Earth.
1:35.8	I'm not personally a huge Sabrina carpenter fam.
	...

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