Similar themes to last week echoed through PMQs today as Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak continued to clash over winter fuel payment cuts.
The Commons approved the government’s controversial bill yesterday to stop winter fuel payments for all but the very poorest of pensioners, with backbencher, Jon Trickett, the only Labour MP to vote against the government. A further 52 Labour MPs abstained from the vote.
Rishi Sunak took no time raising the issue, accusing Starmer of “taking money away” from 10 million pensioners, to which the Prime Minister repeated his line about the £22 billion black hole left behind by the Tories, insisting the current government was clearing up “their mess.”
But the former PM wasn’t letting Starmer off the hook that easily. He continued to grill him on a policy that could see an estimated 1.6 million pensioners who live below the poverty line risk stripped of their winter fuel payments. Sunak asked the PM why he was not publishing an impact assessment on the policy, then answered his own question: “We know why he is hiding the impact assessment; the Labour party’s own analysis claimed that this policy could cause 3,850 deaths”.
Sunak also pointed to the number of Labour MPs conspicuously absent for the vote, insisting Starmer’s cost-cutting pensioner plan “didn’t even convince 50 of his own MPs, who suddenly found that they had urgent business elsewhere”.
Starmer retorted that the decision had been taken to stabilise the economy. “That means we can commit to the triple lock. By committing to it, we can make sure that payments of state pension are higher and therefore there’s more money in the pocket of pensioners”.
There were two main issues that dominated last week’s PMQs, one being winter fuel payment cuts, the other being over arms sales to Israel – which also resurfaced today.
The SNP argued that the government had not gone far enough with the suspension of export licences, with Brendan O’Hara, MP for Argyll and Bute, insisting Labour should have restricted the exports of parts for F-35 fighter jets which were likely used in bombing civilian areas in Gaza. Starmer insisted that his priority, along with the US, is to secure a ceasefire deal as soon as possible.
Nigel Farage’s question caused a stir this week, as he raised Labour’s scheme, which got underway this week, to release thousands of convicts, who’ve served 40 per cent of their sentence, early in order to deal with overcrowding in prisons.
“We’ve witnessed some extraordinary celebratory scenes outside Britain’s prisons, where in some cases serious career criminals were released,” said Farage, “and this to make way for, yes, rioters but equally those who’ve said unpleasant things on Facebook and elsewhere on social media”.
The Reform leader asked whether Starmer understands there is a “growing feeling of anger in this country that we are living through two-tier policing and a two-tier justice system”. He was met with groans from the government benches.
On this issue too, the PM again directed criticism towards the previous government, saying he was “angry to be put in a position of having to release people from prison because the last government broke the prison system,” and that Sunak was “repeatedly warned that he had to adopt the release scheme we put in place.”
The themes of this week’s PMQs mirrored those of last. There was an absence of fresh lines of attack levelled at Starmer, while the PM’s method of defence – blaming everything on the former government – was tediously familiar.
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