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MINISTERS
RIG 'COLD' CASH FOR OLD
The
Sunday Times (London) January 11 1987
By
Brian Deer
AS
public alarm grows over hypothermia deaths among the
elderly, the effect of new government rules will be
to cut the level of cash help to the old and
cold. Investigations by The Sunday Times reveal that
ministers have devised a scheme which will ensure
that special cold weather payments are hardly ever
made.
So-called
"exceptional severe weather" benefits
jumped to £12m last year, compared with £1.7m in
1985, after widespread disquiet about hardship
suffered by the old. Ministers relaxed controls to
allow social security staff more discretion in giving
help.
But
under a new scheme devised by John Major, the social
security minister, these payments are being cut to
virtually nothing this year for the elderly, and
abolished altogether for younger people on
supplementary benefit, who make up half the number
who used to qualify.
On
the surface, the plan appears sensible - offering £5
a week to pensioners when it gets very cold. But the
regulations have been drawn up with the intention
that they should yield cash help only every five
years.
"The
DHSS came to us for meteorological advice," said
one expert at the government's weather headquarters
in Bracknell, Berkshire. "They asked: 'What
temperature is likely to be reached one winter in
five in the major population areas of the country?'
We said -1.5."
Ministers
have also ruled that for money to be paid, a cold
period - defined as a daytime temperature of -1.5 -
must last from Monday to Sunday, so that even the
severest conditions prevailing during other periods
in any week would not lead to a payout. Even one
day's respite during the very worst and most
prolonged bad weather would cancel any right to the
payment.
Under
the new arrangements it is almost inevitable that few
people can look forward to assistance. Had the scheme
been in operation for the last seven years, nothing
would have been paid in four - and during last
winter, which included the coldest February since
1947, only half the areas in which money was paid
would have been eligible for help.
In
the London area, which experienced unusually severe
conditions last year, government calculations for the
new scheme show that no payment would have been made.
Pensioners and other poor people in the capital would
have received only one £5 payment since 1979.
Extra
help for the old and needy during the coldest months
has become an annual issue for social security
ministers. Official figures show that some 60,000 old
people die each year as a result of winter weather.
Many, though obviously not all, of these deaths could
be prevented given sufficient domestic warmth.
Major's
plan has infuriated organisations representing the
elderly. "This is shabby and mean," said
David Hobman, director of Age Concern. "It is
very cruel to make people go through another winter
without the confidence to keep themselves warm."
Age
Concern will tomorrow launch a new appeal to raise
money and volunteers to help the elderly poor. The
campaign aims to distribute food, warm clothing, room
thermometers and advice kits to thousands of people
who might otherwise become vulnerable to hypothermia.
"The
issue this raises is that many old people are very
poor," said Andrew Bowden, Conservative MP for
Brighton. "No system of ad hoc payments will be
effective until the real value of pensions is
increased."
The
Department of Health and Social Security refused a
customary briefing on the new scheme, but this
weekend denied any intention to cut help to the old.
"We are not hoping not to spend money," a
spokesman said. "If it is cold we expect to
pay."
*
Weathermen predict that the next three days will be
the coldest so far this winter with snow and ice
hitting most parts of the country for the first time.
The London weather centre said: "There should be
up to three inches falling in some places,
particularly the northeast." Temperatures are
expected to fall to between -4C and -7C over much of
the country and in some places to -10C.
Snow
fell yesterday in Kent and Surrey for the first time
this year and the eastern counties in England are
likely to bear the brunt of further falls.
TIME FOR A
THAW TO HELP THE OLD
The
Sunday Times (London) January 18 1987
Editorial
(written by Brian Deer)
For
three years, The Sunday Times has been campaigning
for Britain's old and cold, and complaining about the
miserable priority they are accorded in the scheme of
government thinking. Last week, something finally
happened, although only after we had revealed on our
front page the full callousness of the government's
new scheme of emergency winter payments. We were just
in time. Within hours of our report, Britain was
entering into its worst cold snap for years. But
there was no certainty that even that would have
triggered the ludicrous special cold weather payments
formula of £5 a week if the average temperature
drops to minus 1.5C from Monday to Sunday. In the
event, Mrs Thatcher is to be commended for sorting
out the bunglers at the Department of Health and
Social Security who, as we illustrated, rigged the
payments so that hardly any of Britain's old could
get them. Mrs Thatcher decreed that the old should
get their £5 but, leaving aside the board and
lodging debacle, there is no feature of welfare
policy more spectacularly mismanaged than this one.
The
baptism of fire accorded to Mr John Major, the new
social security minister, will no doubt do him good.
But the government must do some deep thinking about
where we go from here. Despite our campaign and last
week's rapid change of mind we remain pessimistic for
the future. The government has made endless petty
adjustments to dodge short-term political flak and
there was no indication that last week's retreat was
any more than a temporary one. Next winter, Britain's
old will probably be as cold as ever.
The
old have no greater hope under a Labour
administration. Inevitably, Labour sought to score
some point from the government's humiliation. Mr Neil
Kinnock, the Labour leader, had a photocall with a
pensioner and made fine-sounding speeches about the
poor. Of course Mr Kinnock was able to pledge an
extra £5 a week throughout the winter to pensioners
and to other people as well. Why not £10? Or £20?
Such pledges can be plucked out of the air as easily
as Mr Major produced his own small-minded scheme,
which lacked only the condition that there must be no
"R" in the month to make it complete.
Like
the board and lodging regulations, on which we have
also long campaigned, the cold weather payment rules
seem to change from one day to the next. Last winter,
payments were made on the basis of local civil
servants putting their heads out of the window and
deciding whether they thought it was cold. That
system paid out some money - around £12m in total -
but it was no less daft than the one which we exposed
last week and which Mrs Thatcher changed so abruptly.
Mr
Major is said have had an uncomfortable time of it,
and is no lover of The Sunday Times this week. If Mrs
Thatcher is immortalised for the school milk, then Mr
Major will go into the political annals for his old
and cold formula. It will always be difficult for him
to explain why he devised a scheme that was not due
to pay any money in four years out of five,
especially since the whole thing is being abolished
next April with the new social security act.
We
find no great enjoyment in the minister's
embarrassment, however. Unlike previous governments,
social security ministers under Mr Norman Fowler have
made a sincere effort to rethink welfare payments so
that they are more accurately targeted towards those
who need them most. The fact that this cannot be done
without creating more flexibility and discretion for
local officials is a matter more of logic than it is
of party politics.
Mr
Major and his officials cannot wait for an election
result to concentrate their thoughts. As Mr Major
knows, social security can give money to the old, but
it does not necessarily give them warmth. For that,
his department must get together with Mr Peter Walker
at energy and Mr Nicholas Ridley at environment to
forge a national fuel efficiency plan.
It is
time for a bold and imaginative initiative. If the
nation managed to re-equip itself for North Sea Gas,
with workmen going into every home, something similar
could be done with an insulation scheme. At the
present rate of progress it will take about 30 years
before our roofs are protected as well as Sweden's.
Such a scheme is a quick job-creator and, if there is
any doubt about where the money would come from, why
are not the same questions asked about, say, Sizewell
B? Energy conservation may be less glamorous than
energy creation, but it is all part of the same
equation for people who need warmth.
If
the government shuns this task, we will be back again
with the same tragic stories that peppered the press
after our revelations last week. But this need not
always be the case. If Mrs Thatcher and her ministers
still have any radical aspirations, they can set
about the much-needed task of helping lead Britain
back towards a respect and a commitment to our most
senior citizens that too many of us have forgotten.
Within
four years, John Major had succeeded Margaret
Thatcher as prime minister.
| brian deer |
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Times Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. No portion
of this article on John Major, social security
minister, may be copied, retransmitted, reposted,
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