No one can say it’s ok for thousands of people to die every year from fuel poverty. But lots of people say that instead of Energy For All, the government should subsidise energy prices for people on low incomes. They say this would target help where it is needed most, on people without the means to cover the costs themselves.
By Ruth London
The principle of means testing is well established in the UK’s welfare state: most state benefits are targeted. The rules are complicated, but basically, you need to declare your income, your savings, and your citizenship/immigration status before getting help with daily expenses, rent, council tax, social housing, social care, childcare, most disability aids, dentistry, glasses, prescriptions, and more. University education, once free, is now rationed by means of the student loan and prohibitive living costs.
On the other hand, GPs and hospital treatment, Child Benefit, schools, the state pension, and some disability benefits are universal, and some other forms of help are available to pensioners and young people without means testing. These universal provisions are no accident – each is the result of massive battles, first to win them and then to defend them over generations. The Lambeth Pensioners Action Group banner, stating “UNIVERSAL BENEFITS ARE UNIVERSAL RIGHTS” reflects this history. A remarkable post in the Socialist Party newspaper records the mass working class uprising in the 1930s where a central, key, demand was “Down with the means test”. In the north of England, the writer’s parents took part in prolonged riots, battles with police, and mass marches on London – which ultimately won, increasing Public Assistance for both men and women.
Fast forward to 2024 when, after 14 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party got back into power. One of the new government’s first moves was to cut the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP). This was a payment of £2-300, designed to protect elderly people from the high cost of keeping warm in winter, regardless of their savings and income.
The Winter Fuel Payment
They didn’t simply “cut” the WFP. They means tested it. They said many pensioners were actually well off home-owners and should not benefit at the expense of young people with families and high rents. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, proclaiming an inherited fiscal “black hole” that she had no hope of filling, may not have expected this move to ignite the fury of young and old, labelling the new government forever as Tories 2.0.
The WFP’s means test took the form of limiting WFP to pensioners receiving the means-tested Pension Credit. Many payments, discounts and exemptions are “passported” to people who already have passed the tests to receive Pension Credit, or Universal Credit, for example. So if you don’t get one benefit, you lose them all.
In the case of Pension Credit, it was estimated that 880,000 people who were entitled to it did not claim it (around 43,000 of these DID claim it after the WFP cut). Many more pensioners in dire poverty – even people scraping a living on only a state pension – do not qualify for it. They are not poor enough for pension credit but they’re poor enough to die because they cannot afford to eat or heat their homes. The government anticipated 4,000 extra deaths in winter 2024-5; they considered this a price worth paying. Ironically, the estimates are that they will gain “little or nothing” – the savings will be eaten up by the cost of additional bureaucracy, and the millions of pounds of NHS expenditure on pensioners made ill from the lack of a payment they have been deemed not to need. The brutality and absurdity of this result has made many people look again at the pros and cons of means testing in general.
For energy pricing policy, this has huge implications. The charity sector has long been pressing for a “social tariff” where people on low incomes pay less for fuel. When we proposed instead a universal model – Energy For All (e4a) – they pointed to the billions worth of energy free energy that will go to people who are very far from the bread line, and asked – should it not go to the neediest customers, instead? E4a in fact has its own way of reclaiming the gain from the wealthy – they will pay a much higher tariff to heat their mansions and private pools. Nevertheless, they will, in the first place, receive their free energy quota.
Universality has its own benefits
- Sophisticated means-testing can avoid cliff edges, by gradually withdrawing benefits as people’s income increases. But many people in need will still lose out. In contrast, no one misses out on a universal provision. We won’t have to jump through hoops for Energy For All. We won’t lose it when we claw our way above the poverty line. We won’t lose it when we move house or get married. In a world of total insecurity, it will be something we can count on, like Child Benefit and what’s left of the NHS.
- We won’t be subject to intrusive prying into our finances and bank accounts – scrutiny the upper class can avoid or evade with the help of their accountants.
- While means-testing is inherently divisive, universal benefits unite the population. The arguments for means testing, divide old and young (“baby boomers” vs “hardworking families”), and divide people with little from people who have nothing at all. In the Winter Fuel Payment debacle, divide and rule spectacularly failed – people chose instead to stand as a community of mutually respectful, entitled individuals. There is still a memory in the UK of a world where teachers and street sweepers could both be entitled to live on the same council estate, as neighbours, and without a “poor door”.
- Means testing is expensive. It’s not that there is a shortage of resources. Rachel Reeves’ “black hole” exists because she has swallowed the whole of neoliberal fiscal rules and values, the assumption that the billions being wasted at the top cannot be challenged, and that “growth” must mean the growth of profits, not the growth of children. The total wealth of 57 UK billionaires increased by £35m per day to £182bn in 2024. Energy giants have pocketed over £420 billion in profits since the energy crisis started. There is plenty of money. All the same, the resources spent on means testing – identifying people who are eligible for help, processing claims, guarding against and prosecuting “fraud” – could instead increase what’s available for everyone.
A little thing called “Pride”
It’s instructive to ask, “Why don’t people claim pension credit?” The reasons are significant, and apply to all other benefits as well.
They may find it too difficult – the application form is 22 pages long and has 243 questions.
They may find it too intrusive, needing to give the state personal information that they fear will one day be used against them, especially if they are immigrant, or if, like millions of UK citizens, they’ve been forced into one or another form of “cheating” just to survive.
Or they may not claim because of “pride” – a reluctance to take money that they don’t see themselves as having earned. People of all ages feel themselves devalued if they cannot live well by their own efforts. The desire to win respect and self-respect by self-sufficiency endures, despite the fact that our efforts and their past and present contributions to society may be huge, but invisible and undervalued. It endures despite the fact that we are all dependent on each other, and most of all those who do not work at all but live very well off “the fat of the land”.
Most common among older generations who will not accept “charity”, pride is often mocked, its adherents becoming subject to the pity they are hoping to avoid, next door but one to contempt. But it is strong and fierce, and not easily overridden. It can be shattered by the government’s trend towards more and more degrading means testing, or it can grow into pride in universal, communal and life-saving entitlements.
