This email was sent to Money Box subscribers on 30 April 2010

Dear Listener

 

A word of warning. Never say to me when faced with an audience of 200 fellow journalists and a sprinkling of PR people ‘you are not encouraged to make a speech but you can if you want to.’ Especially when you have just called on those hacks to support restricting the Winter Fuel Payment to ‘those who need it’, as Phil Bentley MD of British Gas had.

 

So instead of thanking my Mum and my colleagues and the London Press Club itself – which had just given me the Consumer Journalist 2010 award for my work on Money Box – I said ‘Please don’t support means-testing the Winter Fuel Payment. If you restrict it to those on low incomes then millions who need it will not claim it.’ Oddly I got applause.

 

Look at Pension Credit, I might have added, where more than one million over 60s fail to claim more than £2 billion a year they could get if they could follow the complex rules and didn’t mind declaring that their income was low and their savings modest.

 

True, Winter Fuel Payment goes to some who do not need it – not least a few thousand ex-pats who claimed it in the UK before they left and now live in warmer climes such as the Portuguese Azores or the equatorial French province of Guiana where winter is unknown. But means-testing isn’t the answer.

 

To be fair (when am I not?) Phil Bentley – whose company had sponsored the awards and given me lunch – insisted that British Gas does not support means-testing Winter Fuel Payment. But it does not want to give it to those who do not need it. The danger is that will be too subtle a distinction for many people.

 

One way to achieve it is to give WFP to everyone at 60 but take it back from those who pay higher rate tax, either through self-assessment or PAYE. That would defuse the means-testing movement. And I would no longer get it. Which is probably a good thing.

 

ON MONEY BOX THIS SATURDAY

 

***It’s the third and final interview with the Men Who Would Be Chancellor. This week it’s the turn of Liberal Democrat Vince Cable. He has chosen to come in live on Saturday rather than pre-recording.

 

***Whatever the next Government (whoever it is) does it may be derailed by the Greek ruins known as its economy and the downgrading of Spanish government debt. We are not in the Eurozone but how will the problems of those 16 countries affect us? (and PS what does that ‘downgrading its debt’ bit mean?)

 

***We will do some numberish stuff about just what the political pledges are and can an MP like Nick Clegg really get child tax credit?

 

***The Manchester Building Society has been raining on its savers by refusing them access to the best interest rates which it offers to new visitors to the northwest mutual. Why do banks and building societies dis loyalty?

 

All that – and maybe more, maybe less, maybe something totally different – will be in Money Box at noon on Saturday, at nine pm on Sunday, or at any time on the website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox. There you can also watch videos, follow up items, read web pieces, download transcripts, follow links, and send us stories or ideas you want us to look into. And of course Have Your Say on one of these topics. 

 

Best wishes,

 

 

Paul

 

PS Don’t forget the programme preview on Breakfast BBC 1 soon after 0845 on Saturday.

 

PPS for other awards won this week check out www.headlinemoney.co.uk/Awards/2010/default.asp

 

 

 


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