Winter Fuel Payment

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

It is usual for a Minister to thank the Member for their question, but I actually mean it in this case, because the right hon. Lady has completely proved my point that the Conservatives have learned no lessons whatever. They think they can come to this Chamber and call for more spending and oppose every tax rise—and they expect to be taken seriously ever again? They will not be.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

As a Labour MP who voted against the winter fuel payment cuts, I welcome this change in position, but I urge the Minister and the Government to learn the lessons. One of them is to listen to Back Benchers. If the Minister and the Government listen to Back Benchers, we can help the Government get it right and help them avoid getting it wrong. We do not want to be here in a year or two’s time with a Minister sent to the Dispatch Box to make another U-turn after not listening to Back Benchers on disability benefit cuts. If they listen now we can help the Government get it right.

[Torsten Bell]

It is important to listen to Back Benchers and to Front Benchers. It is even important to listen to Opposition Members on occasion, particularly when they are digging their own grave with their party’s policies. More seriously, the point that my hon. Friend raises is important: everybody on the Government Benches wants to make sure that this is a fairer country that is growing again—that wages are growing, that poverty is falling, that inequality is coming down. That is what we need to deliver. Sometimes that will involve tough choices, including all the ones that the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) opposes. Those choices will need to be made, because we are a party of government not a party of protest, but they are made in the interests of our values and of a fairer country and a fairer Britain.